


The Jaws Job

by Radiolaria



Category: Leverage
Genre: Crack, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Crack, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Introspection, Team Dynamics, Team as Family, and still, so much crack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 09:07:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2845583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Radiolaria/pseuds/Radiolaria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the plane back home, Sophie was napping on Nate’s shoulder, who was napping on her head. Eliot was watching a film with Hardison and probably on the verge of falling asleep on him as well. And Parker, safe from Nate’s closed eyes, smoothed down the paper she had stolen from his pocket during the prep. </p><p>It read:<br/>“Bare necessities to wrap the con:<br/>- Parker’s loot;<br/>- Sophie’s room at the palace;<br/>- VERY IMPORTANT stolen letters and documents;<br/>- Eliot’s elderly friends;<br/>- Hardison’s access to internet;<br/>- trust this is just crazy enough to work;<br/>- doesn’t matter.</p><p>Note: never go on a trip when the team is emotionally compromised."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Jaws Job

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TrespassersWill](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrespassersWill/gifts).



> Written for [TrespassersWill](http://archiveofourown.org/users/TrespassersWill/pseuds/TrespassersWill) as part of the Leverage Secret Santa exchange.  
> Timeline: season 4; between The Potato Job and The Boiler Room Job.  
> Rather than a fully endorsed con, this is best read as a relationship- and interaction-oriented patchwork. If the original prompts seem worryingly blown out of recognisable proportions, it's because they are. This is 20k of unapologetic fluff and playing with the characters.
> 
> Thanks to Gus for the help and re-reading.

Parker hated valuables that did not go straight to the point; paintings that required asking whether or not they were upside down; statues that looked like they could have been faked by crashing two cars together; jewels you could eat.

She felt proportions like factors and coefficients. Drag and pull. Weight and lift. Forces she was familiar with and her life often hung on this familiarity. Art was not so different from flying. Old pieces, classical pieces, she could think out their value. Perfectly shaped sets, calibrated with such precision they could probably rocket to the moon. Stuff that came with a story only and little craftsmanship was Nate’s field, not hers. Like the silly Ruby Slippers that ruined the evening.

Like the Potato.

Only she had liked the Potato and was aware much skill had gone into making that Potato.

It still confused her a little.

If someone wants to craft a potato, why not make it green or shaped like the Millenium Star? At least the Ruby Slippers had glitters and could probably be used as a base for a time portal. Like a Portkey.

Eliot had said the Millenium Star-shaped Potato would be a nightmare to peel. Sophie had simply rolled her eyes. Nate had been even more long-winded than usual in attempting to shut down the conversation and it involved far too much brows-wriggling for Parker to ignore it this time. She was genuinely interested in understanding the Potato. Nate acted too keen on having them out of his apartment for her taste.

 _Parker, we can still hear you,_ Hardison chirped on the com.

She grunted and halted at the intersection, refraining from hitting angrily the metal plate beneath her. Banging her way in an air duct had never been her style, but there were times when dealing with Nate required violence.  Sophie agreed.

“You don’t get to complain about anything!” She brandished a finger in the air, only to bump into the plate just over her head. The closed space echoed with a low disgruntled thrum, almost mechanical of origin, which prompted a squeak of surprise from Hardison. It eased her complain into a plea. “I’m the one stuck in an air duct on my day off.”

Nate’s voice came ringing in her ears, annoyed.

_On our day off, Parker. I had other plans._

Hardison let out an audible sigh, partly gulped down by his taking a mouthful of soda, sound oddly amplified by the com. She had to warn him about that.

_Hmm. Listen, Nate there is no need to stay in here. I volunteered to help because someone needs to watch her back and the security’s not that-_

“ _I_ did not volunteer for this”, Parker ruled.

She had resumed her progression long the air duct, checking her position through the ventilation grid from time to time. Her elbows were racking a little too loudly for her comfort against the metal. She halted before the awaited grid, dislodged it and peeked underneath. Save the exit sign blinking at the end of the room, the offices were in complete darkness and Parker had to squint for a few seconds to adapt.

 _Parker, you stole it!_ cried Hardison at the other end of the com.

On her right, the large door of the practice vault was doing its best to appear menacing in the dim light. Parker was about to smirk in triumph when she registered Hardison’s last words.

“No, I didn’t!” She whispered angrily, scrambling to slip through the hole. She landed without a sound.  “And I can’t believe _you_ don’t believe me.”

_I do believe you._

That was Nate. As Nate knew Parker was picturing him this instant.

Nate in all his glorious crypticness, sneering so very slightly in Lucille.

Nate was also picturing Parker smirking most of the time. Hardison, sitting beside him in the over-targeted under-lit vehicle, soda in one hand, mouse in the other, was staring in disbelief.

“Serioulsy, man?”

 _What?_ Parker wailed at the end of the line. _Of course you don’t. I’m the one returning it and I haven’t even stolen it._

Nate leant on the table, hand supporting his chin and index covering his lower lip. He could not help the smile forming there and Hardison was still staring from his chair.

“Parker, I asked you to do it because you were the quickest and most competent to return it discreetly. That’s all.”

There was a silence at the end of the com, followed by a soft thump, proof of Parker’s steady progression towards the goal.

 _Oh. I am._ A skidding sound. _Thank you. I am inside. I would have picked me as well._

Hardison checked the security cameras directed at the building and waited for the alarms not to go off. They had done their job. It was all Parker and her fingers now. He turned his chair to Nate, fingers intertwined before him, a dubious frown on his face.

“Wait Nate, if you knew she hadn’t stolen the Slippers, why on earth did you send Sophie and Eliot’s home? They should have helped.”

Nate repressed a smile and sat back into his chair, peering at Hardison from the corner of his eye.

“You’re assuming I don’t suspect you.”

Hardison gave him a look of tired disbelief and Nate simply opened his hands.

“I know you didn’t either”, Nate continued.  “The job smelt of an inside job and had it not been for my cleaning boy putting them in the middle of the coffee table, we would never have known.”

 _I would have known._ Parker managed to pipe up through an unnerving low-pitched grazing lilt coming from her side. _You could smell the smell of glitters from Nate’s closet._

Nate knew he had the face of a man hit by a piano in a cartoon when Hardison’s eyebrows completely disappeared under his woolly hat.

“I won’t ask.” Nate shook his head and took his attention back to Hardison. “Of course, the Slippers are the kind of artefact you collect, there is no denying it.”

Hardison did not deny, simply made a resigned pout and disentangled his thumbs in agreement. “But you see, the kind of pick and grab required there is a bit too timed and physical for you.”

Hardison offered him a brilliant smile in answer.

“No. I know it was not you. Or Parker.” Nate paused, frowning. “And I didn’t exactly send Eliot and Sophie home.”

The hitter and the grifter had stormed quite theatrically out of Nate’s apartment, claiming they were expected elsewhere.

The slippers were a mystery to Nate, but not exactly something to worry about. Stumbling upon unaccounted _very_ large balls of bills was not unheard of in this household. He knew every one of them still took jobs on the side and would never discourage such a precaution.  

But Sophie and Eliot, edgy after a lengthy con run in Chicago, that both of them had spent mostly waiting, had apparently turned the incident into an opportunity to plainly go at each other’s throat. It had been quick and harsh, the usual harmless quips suddenly loaded up with intent.

They had misread each other; wilfully put meaning into their words; Nate didn’t know. Nate knew Sophie had been genuinely struck by the way Eliot had said “liar”. And Eliot equally hurt by the way she took a step away from him.

If the uncomfortable shuffle that replaced the skilful silence at the end of the com was anything to go by, Parker was pondering whether to ask about the issue at hand rather than breaking in the practice’s vault.

“They will be alright eventually”, Nate reassured her, brushing back his hair and massaging the base of his skull. “Don’t worry, Parker. How’s it looking for you?”

The shuffle resumed, assured and deft. Parker would be out in no time, free of the magical mystery Ruby Slippers that should never have left this vault.

_Boring. I told you I could have done it on my own._

Hardison grimaced at the screen and stretched his fingers in frustration before retorting:

“Parker, you _shouted_ you could do it in your sleep. And then tore your gears from Nate’s closet and stomped out. We had to _run_ after you, otherwise you would have probably hop-notched from roof to roof until you reached the building. There was no way I was going to let you in alone.”

_I would never have stolen them in the first place. It’s a boring job. But hop-notching from roof to roof is an excellent suggestion._

What a fun evening it had been. They didn’t need it after the complex heist they had pulled in Chicago for the past week. They had agreed on not taking a client for at least a few days, in need of a breath as they were. Nobody had expected the Ruby Slippers, the subsequent flash investigation quite cleverly conducted by Hardison, or whatever the hell got into Eliot and Sophie when they started accusing each other, at first teasingly, then more bitterly.

On the com, Parker was rambling on about bolts and security systems using obsolescence. The clicks and clunks paced her speech, filled the silence on their side of the line. Hardison was only half-listening to her, switching from one security camera to the other, a focused pout starting to form on his face.

_Real easy._

Hardison interrupted his scanning to clap ironically.

“Yeah, beautiful, whoopee, I cannot contain my bliss at the moment. But do consider this: there’s a guard stopping by to say hello in five, though I cannot find him for the life of me.”

They could hear Parker pull out her tongue to them. Hardison checked his screens, had a quick glance to his cellphone beside the keyboard and settled back in his chair, a stern look for Nate on the face.

”Why did you let it go anyway?” the young man inquired.

His voice had dropped down to a whisper, a futility which grated Nate.

“I’m not letting it go. I trust the two adults they are to know how to apologise to each other and work it out without having me in their ears monitoring. But they are also part of a team and I am not letting it go that easily. Can we please focus on the job?”

Hardison squinted at him for a few seconds, grave, before looking back to his screens.

Nate was left blinking at him. At a loss.

His strategy in handling the quarrels so far had been, and he was ashamed to admit it to himself, to gauge the situation with as much distance as possible and take notes for future reference. In handling each of his team members. And perhaps especially Sophie.

A conflict with Sophie could now well end his life and he had little evidence as to whether or not Sophie was in conflict with him. He suspected it.

His beating around the bush had not escaped Hardison.       

 _Huho,_ Parker said calmly on the com.

“Parker?” Hardison asked less calmly and jumping to the screen as if to reach the thief. “Huho better be a pet name for your gear because I’m not letting any other kind of huhos into Lucille.”

_Shh. There’s something wrong in there._

Nate cut Hardison, who was about to panic audibly and lengthily.

“Is everything okay? Are you out of the vault without the slippers? Is the guard already there?”

_I’m fine. And out. Dorothy’s back home. The guard is not coming. And I think he won’t come at all. This is a real mess in the office. There’s files everywhere._

“Where are you exactly?”

_I’m just outside the vault on the right in the clerk’s office. I wanted to exit the building via the south façade. More fun. I think we landed in the middle of a robbery._

Hardison’s eyes bulged, offended, before he leant in to check the blueprints and the cameras.

“I’mma just ignore the fact you deliberately omitted to inform me of your more fun exit route and focus on the robbery bit. _Robbery_. You mean _not_ our robbery that is not technically a robbery since we are returning a valuable. That robbery of ours is not the only robbery?”

Hardison let out a strangled ‘Holy Moses’ and began typing frantically, while several windows popped up on the screen. Nate shielded his face before the sudden change in light. Nothing red was blinking on the screen, which he interpreted promptly as a very good sign.

_The room’s been searched, rather they searched into one cupboard and scattered the papers. I heard nothing coming in, so it must have happened before we went in. Whoever broke in was interrupted and whoever interrupted them is nowhere to be found._

“Okay, I don’t have you on screen. But I have no calls, no internal signals of any sort. If the guard stopped someone, they didn’t signal it to any colleague. It’s a small and outdated practice”, Hardison stressed. “Even with the added presence of the Slippers in the vault, it was just for a few days and they didn’t even bother to reinforce the security.”

Nate hummed, a finger suspended in mid-air, not talking.

“Someone must have taken them out”, Hardison finished.

_There is an awful lot of cupboards in here. The practice must have all their files on paper. More security through obsolescence. They deserve to be robbed._

Hardison rubbed the side of his nose, gesturing her to stop.

“You should get out. You finished what you were here for.”

_Hardison, there’re other thieves in the building and they might be in trouble._

“You bet your sweet ass they are. They probably attacked a guard. And we ain’t gonna risk our sweet asses for their asses.”

Nate was studying with care the blueprints on the screen, a finger still pressed to his lips. When he moved again, it was with extreme slowness and weight, anticipating his partner’s reaction.

“Parker, what’s in those files? The ones opened.”

Hardison swivelled on the spot and shouted:

“No, Nate! Don’t encourage her.”

Sheets rustled at the end of the com.

_Letter copies. Can’t read them. At all. It’s in something I can’t- I don’t think it’s Spanish._

“See. Nothing interesting. Nuthing. It’s European stuff”, Hardison enunciated. Nate glowered back at him, grabbing a notebook and a pen abandoned on the table. “Now we can go home.”

Parker was struggling with the content of the letters.

 _Kutxako faktura? Hil da? Kaleretu?_ _Mean anything to you?_

Nate attempted to transcribe the sounds, with a grimace as only reward. The pen ended on the ground.

“Parker”, Hardison concluded. “You are so right in assuming this is _not_ Spanish. If we go now, I buy everyone dinner.”

“Send a photo”, Nate suggested.

“We could go grab a pizza?”

_Scan in-coming._

“No one wants pizz-“ Hardison sat straight the moment the picture appeared on the screen. “What the hell?”

The scan received was a mess of small prints, cursive writing and watermarks.

“Anti-copy paper”, Nate specified. “That’s good, very good. They went through much trouble not to have those decipherable by unwanted eyes. Those files are indeed important. ”

_I need Sophie or Eliot._

Hardison frowned.

“You need a grifter _or_ a hitter?”

_I need a translator inside. Those are obviously important papers and we need to know what’s important inside. I can’t just grab whatever file is the closest._

“I agree. I’m calling Eliot in. He should be there in twenty minutes. Parker, try and find out what happened to our burglars. Stay out of sight.”

“What! Nate, no, we’re not letting her alone with some low-life no-good psycho thief!”

Parker huffed in contempt.

“Yeah. That’s why I’m calling Eliot.”

“And a guard!” Hardison cried. ”Don’t forget the guard who could be very angry because his building just got robbed and he was possibly assaulted. This, this is... I’m calling Sophie.” Hardison dove for his cellphone, nearly toppling Nate in the movement. He swung back into his chair, dialling and muttering. “She’s not going to like it. She’s going to- Soph- Sophie.”

 _This better be good, Nate, I just took out of the oven my muffins and no one interrupts my muffin night,_ Eliot growled at the end of the phone.

“Yes, Eliot. This is more than good, this is possibly trouble.”

Hardison, beside Nate, repeated “possibly” with utter disbelief.

“We need you now”, Nate carried on. “Inside the offices with Parker. Someone broke in and started –failed- a robbery while we were in there. But not for the slippers. For papers, and we’re going to help them.”

 _I swear if you did not call to apolo- Hardison?_ Sophie let out a very un-Sophie-like sound and Nate gave a faint grin to Hardison. _Is this Nate beside you? Did he just mention a robbery?_

“Yes, Sophie, there’s a robbery happening right now inside the building where Parker is. Nate wants to investigate and send Eliot for translation.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Hardison. Not for translation only”, Nate rectified. “Certainly to clean up and translate. _Maybe_ to extract a robber and deal with a guard.”

 _My night off!_ Eliot barked. _You have to be kidding. Why can’t you do the translation?_

“Because Nate did not understand a word of what Parker was trying very laboriously to read”, Nate deadpanned.

Sophie seemed to show distress at the end of Hardison’s phonecall:

_Hardison, what is going on inside that building? And what are those documents?_

“We don’t know and we don’t know. That’s why Nate thinks we need back-up. I, for one, am in favour of clicking our heels three times and getting the hell outta there.”

 _Yes, Sophie!  I need Sophie,_ Parker barged in, sounding more and more nervous. _It’s definitely something not Spanish or not Russian or a mix of the two._

 _I am in favour of staying alive and not getting involved,_ Eliot announced. _Tell Parker to get out._

“Eliot, for god’s sake”, Nate boomed, his voice muffling all the others. “I’ve heard the door of my apartment shut three minutes ago and your car’s two minutes ago. I know you’re already on your way, so stop endangering yourself by talking and driving, and just go pick Sophie who, by the sound of it, has been trying to open that stubborn garage door of hers for the past thirty seconds.”

Lucille was silent as a tomb, save for Sophie’s attempt at closing the half-opened garage door.

“And why in the world is everyone’s phone volume so loud?” Nate cried. “Parker could probably hear us from the building. Sophie, we need to know those documents value and we are not leaving with two cabinets worth of files. Eliot, the thief could be dangerous. Hardison and I will find you a way inside.”

“Well, Hardison mostly. Nate’s just going to boss-“ Hardison’s voice withered out under Nate’s glare. “Hardison has to work.”

 

***

 

Sophie was on the verge of mentally chopping off Nate’s head when he found her waiting for him on her doorstep. Much to his amusement, the whole trip to the besieged practice was spent pestering about Nate risking Parker for nothing –papers- and since Eliot could not help but agree, it had a strange soothing effect on him.

He could never quite get if Sophie was doing it on purpose, even her anger. But on this instance, he was grateful for her fevered talkativeness. They parked in a side-alley, only stopping to pick appropriate equipment and glower silently at Nate. Hardison’s glowering probably was the most intense, yet went completely unnoticed as he was staring at the back of Nate’s head.

As Sophie was walking away, fiddling with her earbud, Nate called Eliot back.

“Do we have a problem?”

Sophie crossed the street before him, in long strides, heels clicking on the pavement like hands on the clock. Eliot watched Sophie’s light silhouette hover against the sky, then her shadow on the pavement; she was out of sight but there was no way of telling if she had the com back on.

Earlier this evening, he hadn’t wanted to hurt her feelings.

He hadn’t cared.

Very thoroughly, very graciously, as she always did, Sophie had snapped. By simply taking a step back from him, aware of what she was unleashing on Eliot. _Your anger terrifies me._ His enemy could not have found a better way to hurt him. And now Parker was in a hazardous spot because of her.

“She is a liar. And she is not harmless.”

Nate didn’t seem willing to argue with that. He simply nodded and gripped Lucille’s handle.

“Neither are you, Eliot.”

And closed the door on Eliot’s aggravated discomfort.

He followed Sophie with a degraded mood, listening to Parker’s steady breathing at the end of the com and waiting for her instructions. Past the corner, Sophie had stopped well before the block’s entrance, looking back at him, very much unreadable at this hour of the night.

Upon spotting him, she gave him an intent nod, which unsettled him until Parker’s clear “South entrance” rang in their ears and he caught a small hand waving from behind the building’s corner.

He could not repress his smile.

The electronic locks had all been opened by Hardison and they simply had to walk inside. Parker was already gesturing them silently to follow her up the service stairs. Sophie was before him, probably as quiet as he had ever seen her, in line with every one of Parker’s orders. Parker would raise an arm, Sophie would stop; Parker would signal them to wait, Sophie would wait. It was only natural for him. Being this connected to Parker. He had not realised it was a behaviour commanded unequivocally by the young woman, even in characters like Sophie.

Parker was good at staying out of trouble and alive. And Sophie got that. They all did.

Nate and Hardison had gone silent at the other end of the com, still in search of the elusive guard and the more elusive thief. The building was not big, but a badly secured maze. Cameras were covering the strict minimum and the only reason a piece as valuable as the original Ruby Slippers were briefly stored there was for a legal formality. Of course, it had been enough for someone –meaning Sophie, or whoever, but the fact Sophie had lied had bit nastily- to grab it and let it in Nate’s apartment.      

Parker seemed not bothered a jot by the obscurity, sliding between doors and railings, when Sophie and he bumped more than once into a table. The guard was still nowhere to be seen and Eliot was beginning to have a bad feeling about the whole weirdness of the situation.

Most disturbing, Eliot could not help noticing, was the way the two women were moving in the dark and his own clear perception of them. He could not see a thing in the underlit old offices, but he could sense Sophie, intent and straight, and Parker, flowing and light. The moment they reached the clerk’s office, Sophie headed directly to the mess, not waiting for Eliot’s direction. Parker grabbed his arm, gliding past him and dragging him out of the room into the corridors, before he could react.

He usually expected Parker’s moves. He ignored his gut feeling.

Sophie’s profile, her fingers, the rim of the papers she was leafing through shone briefly before disappearing behind a partition. They were in the dark, but Parker’s presence and Sophie’s absence made it suddenly easy to breath.

“Jesus, Parker. It’s pitch black in there.”

She shushed him and dragged him on another floor. He froze when he saw the light under a door at the end of a corridor. They stepped closer, hiding behind a corner.

His whole body tensed in anticipation, touching Parker’s elbow to get her attention.

“How did you know?”

“Pipes. It’s an old building”, she whispered, a wicked grin on the lips.”I thought I heard voices above one of the rooms.”

_We have no visual inside, guys. Be very careful._

They could hear Nate’s concentration, Hardison drumming on the table and, faint but steady, Sophie’s writing and turning pages. He felt focused. Parker was looking at him intently, perfectly still, waiting for him.

She did not need to explain.

Eliot gave Parker a nod and she lightly bounced towards the window, opened carefully the one closest to the wall and peeked out. Half outside, she looked over her shoulder to Eliot, a subtle gleam in the eye, and stepped out on the edge.

“Parker is trying the window. I’m going to be just behind the door. Call me in the moment anyone spot you”, Eliot whispered, moving back to the door and placing his hand above the handle. “The moment something’s off, the moment you see a weapon drawn.”

_Hmm hmm._

_Just don’t take unnecessary risks_ , came Sophie’s soft voice, her writing silent.

_Got that._

For a minute, they could only hear through the com the steady and fragile scratching of her clothes against the stone. It was louder than her breathing.

Eliot could feel the wood against shoulder, its flaws and strength, and he focused on what was behind, already drawing a choreography from the door to the window, a choreography in which guns were sent quickly waltzing in the air, emptied of their cartridge. Best case scenario: the thieves were holding the guard hostage. The employer could have seen their faces and the thieves were trying to figure out what to do with him. Amateurs probably.

Parker opened the door behind him and Eliot yelped, leaping away not to stumble inside.

“Jesus Christ, Parker are you insane?”

She simply grinned in answer and let him step inside the room.

“We’re clear”, she announced on top of her lungs.

Hardison hooted at the end of the line in relief.

 _My ears, Hardison,_ Sophie softly whimpered.

 _No one’s inside?_ Nate asked for confirmation.

Eliot crossed the room to check on the hunched over silhouette of a man. Stripped of his clothes and smelling strongly of chloroform.

“The guard’s knocked out. But, Nate, he didn’t fight a smidge.”

Parker noisily inhaled the air around and scanned the room, before jumping to a corner where a bin was standing innocuously. She gave it a small kick and looked inside, concluding her inspection with a nod.   

“And they had coffee. Two cups, different drinker”, Parker mused. “I heard them talking. Not arguing. _Talking.”_

 _So our guard was friendly with the thief,_ Nate started. _They agreed on the chloroform for the story._

 _Story which would be burglar not finding what he was looking for, call- paging someone and oh, you should get an Oscar for that performance, man,_ Hardison followed. _Sorry, I only found a footage I could use. But your theory works._

 _Thief disarms guard and both walk to the upper store, even less secured, straight to the one room without cameras,_ Nate intervened. _They have a chat about where to find certain files. The guard has probably no idea but they still agree to carry on the plan, maybe to get out with other fi- Sophie!_

Sophie!” Parker echoed Nate, springing out of the room, hooking Eliot’s elbow and driving him along the corridors and staircases. “Sophie is still with the files.”

 _No,_ Sophie murmured, prickled. _And Sophie has also lived to be, well, a certain age in this profession, without your help, thank you very much. I got out the moment you said no one was inside. Our thief is back on the premise and frankly making a mess of the files I had put back in order. Ungrateful child, she doesn’t deserve our help. No idea what she’s after, after what? Half an hour? And in ten minutes, I found three unrelated dirty cases._

Eliot let out a frustrated growl and resumed his running down the stairs with Parker.

“I’m gonna walk in and pluck this idiot and walk out.”

 _I agree. There’s only so much you can do to rescue someone,_ Sophie simpered before faltering. _Eliot, you were not talking about me, right?_

Eliot’s answer came in the shape of Eliot rushing past Sophie’s hiding spot, bursting inside the room and pouncing on the unfortunate burglar, who would have jumped out of her catsuit and mask, if she had gotten time to see the hitter coming. She collapsed on the floor, instantly knocked out. Parker had trotted up to Eliot, an air of curiosity on the face while Sophie crept from behind a desk and joined them, considering with a puzzled expression Eliot’s ministrations to their rescue victim.  

“Hello, darling.” Eliot waved a furious index at the thief’s unconscious form. “You weren’t invited to the party. And now who has to carry you out? Your favourite charity!”

Sophie’s hands fell from her hips to her thighs with a distinctly peeved flounce.

“Eliot, you incapacitated her!”

The hitter’s scowl threatened to settle permanently, as he flung the woman’s body across his shoulder and grabbed the nearest file.

“That’s not-“argued Sophie, but, without another word, she picked two specific files and came jogging behind them.

Parker was still posing pensively in the middle of the room.

“I _think_ I like her catsuit better than mine.”

 

***

 

“Not going to reveal my name to a bunch of thieves.”

“Watch your tongue, young woman”, Hardison hissed in his most Rasputin-like voice.

“Young wom- you’re my age!”

The young woman, probably younger than Hardison, head tightly French-braided and cool-eyed, was sitting as straight as her condition was allowing her.

“How is he even allowed in this commando force?” she asked Nate.

Eliot, standing cross-armed behind the young woman, purled his lips and Nate warned him silently.

They had retreated in MacRory’s backroom, trying to alcoholise the thief into consciousness or confession. She was nowhere near any of those. Thanks to Mr. Sparky.

Sophie kept going on round trips between the bar and the backroom with various concoctions reluctantly suggested by Eliot’s gritted teeth. That might, just might, help the girl recover from her blow to the head.

Parker was sitting beside Nate, mimicking his hard-boiled posture, scrutinising the girl’s face and probably trying to figure out when to bark “Talk” at her. None of them were looking threatening enough, so Hardison stick out his chest.

“We are not a commando force” Nate tried to reason. “We are not even really thieves. More of a private association specialised in restitution and justice.”

“And all things thieverish”, added Parker.

Nate closed his eyes and Sophie bravely took over from him:

“We are not the police. We are not associated with any gangs or criminal organisations. Private individuals hire us when they run out of hope. We didn’t even know you were inside the building and when we did, we-“

“We genuinely wanted to help but you kind of made it Mass Effect level of complicated for us.”

Eliot approved silently and Nate obviously wished he could empty the girl’s glass, but Eliot’s hangover recipes were hazardous- and effective.

The young woman’s eyes already displayed less fogginess than before and understanding seemed to make its way to her heavy head. She sat a little straighter, considered them one after the other and decided to talk.

And _talked_.

Some Zola-level of backstory was happening around midnight a Saturday night in MacRory’s backroom.

On their day off.

After a really long exposition, the talkative thief, who wouldn’t be referred to as anything but Jones, turned out to be a starting private investigator hired by an unfortunate family.

“My client trusted this Perrier’s company; they wanted to settle in France where they had a house. So they bought a nice present for their retirement, a boat of their own. They made all the payments, got the boat, the permit, took lessons and the moment they sailed, drowned. Her husband died; their oldest son is in hospital, in intensive care for now. But who will pay for an aid? We can’t bring the case to America because the District Court decided it was not qualified to judge it. The case failed in France because of permits and whatnot. The boat was a rushed job and Perrier knew it. Walked free and my client’s family cut on the coffin expense for the hospital bed.”

Parker nodded approvingly and Sophie just gawked at the woman, horrified, before sighing:

“Well, aren’t you a bundle of joy?”

Jones winced.

“I have to work on the rapport with the clients.”

“Yeah, you do”, Hardison grunted. “You scared the hell out of us in that office. And you probably traumatised the guard.”

Nate pinched the bridge of his nose before giving it another go.

“So. You tried to steal the notary and get information about Perrier’s transactions. And get yourself caught in the process.”

“I obviously didn’t plan on getting caught, by you. Miguel needs compensation and quite frankly my client needs revenge. Had it not been for me, she would have flown to France and tried to kill them with her best cutlery.”

Sophie looked about to murder her on the spot and the young detective lowered her eyes, uncomfortable.

“Listen, I got you in trouble and I apologise for that. I’m learning my trade. I thank you for your help, however unwanted it was. Sorry. Didn’t mean that. I didn’t expect the papers to be in Basque, I didn’t even know I had the right files in my hands, much less anything of value until you came. So I do thank you. They are good people, the Marsters. They deserve a retrial.”

“All Sophie uncovered is more private letters, threats, complaints. Other people were fooled and obviously didn’t even reach the trial step. The people on whom you were trying to gather information are slippery as eels. You could find something on them.” Nate gave her a bitter grimace. “They’ll go through the net.”

“And that‘s what we do”, Parker concluded in a low voice, a proud smile on the lips.

Every pair of eyes around the table turned to her and Parker’s smile became a thin line.

“No?” She looked to Nate and the thief, confused.

Sophie bit her lower lip and her eyes rolled up to the ceiling, where Eliot was already trying to conceal his growing frustration. This was getting ridiculous. Hardison signalled Nate to get it over with.

“Yes, that’s what we do. We’re willing to help. Let us meet with your clients and you won’t regret it.” The girl was about to interrupt him but Nate grinned at her. “We have alternative sources of revenue.”

  

***

 

The day after was mostly spent trying to get Sophie out of bed before ten to meet the Marsters, keeping Parker awake (at some point, Eliot just gave up and would allow her cereals anytime she was about to doze off and Nate about to glare) and listening to Hardison explain in ten different ways just how rubbish this con man was, selling dream boats to people and never fulfilling his contract under different names.

“So are we helping them?”

Eliot had also given up keeping tracks of the options Parker considered appropriate in this peculiar case and simply stated:

“We can’t beat this Perrier guy on the legal battleground.”

Nate leant back into the sofa, arms opened on the cushions behind Hardison and Sophie, who both looked like they could crawl back in bed.

“Justice does not set the truth, only a judiciary truth. It does not guarantee what is right or wrong. Lawyers are just marketing representatives selling _a_ truth to the judge. _Of course_ we could beat them in court. But not with our resources. “

“Could we steal someone’s?” Parker asked.

Nate’s face creased with delight.

“Precisely.”

He reached for his drink on the coffee table and settled back.

“How do you catch a shark?” he threw at no-one in particular.

“I’m not fighting underwater with a harpoon again,” Eliot warned him.

A small snort escaped Nate.

“No.” He made a little wheel movement with his free hand. “How do you _empower_ a shark?”

“With a bigger shark”, Parker enthusiastically offered.

“We don’t have bigger sharks, Parker.” Eliot shook his head and put his elbows on his knees. “This is not pre-history.”

“I so wished you hadn’t started about sharks on the French Riviera. They had one, years ago.”

Hardison stretched out an arm to Eliot, calling out his attention.

“Actually, sharks are very varied in shapes and sizes. So if our shark is a little shark like a catshark, it would be quite easy to get your hand on a bigger shark, like a tiger shark.”

Parker opened big eyes.

“Do tiger sharks eat catsharks?”

“A shark remains a shark and the only shark I want anywhere me is in my plate, cooked and seasoned.”  Sophie was beginning to sound hungry and Nate was looking at her as if he was seeing her for the first time. “What?”

“Fine”, Eliot stopped her. “First don’t make dish out of sharks; they are protected, okay? Second”, Eliot directed his attention and finger at Hardison, who showed innocent hands, so he returned to Sophie. “Don’t dish sharks; some of them are perfectly harmless.” He focused on Parker.” Third, I don’t think this conversation is helping in anyway solving our problem about the client. This is just stupid.” And back to Sophie. “Third, the locals actually use liquor like _Pastis_ to go with the fish and then-“

“Guys! Back to our real but metaphorical bigger shark. We need to find someone to eat him for us.”

“Well, that should be easy”, Sophie arched an eyebrow and purred. “This is the South of France. They _season_ their foes here.”

“What is it with you and the Mafia”, Hardison moaned.

“We won’t have to.” She scanned their faces and turned to Nate, radiant. “Sharks enjoy the sun and pigeons of the _Côte d’Azur_. All _kinds_ of sharks. Sharks interested in fast-money making businesses, just like our mark. Let’s play matchmakers. Pick your poison. Not deadly but, you know, it’s a love potion and in certain species the female eats the male after love...”

Nate licked his lower lips in anticipation and had the gullibility of thinking Eliot would not notice. The man should just bury his ego and go for it.

“No mob?” Nate’s head tilted with impertinence and he leant forward the screen. “We just have to pick one shark big enough to charm and eat our mark, but small enough not to be a big bad.”

Parker blinked at the screen and let out a satisfied “hu” before asking:

“So, do we have to steal the French not-mafia?”

“Yes. No, Parker. We’ll just-”

Eliot interrupted Nate, hand opened to Parker.

“Actually, no, she’s right, that could be handy. Our mark doesn’t navigate those waters. He probably doesn’t know who is dangerous.”

Hardison beamed, turning to Nate.

“Come on, we could definitely spook him a little.”

Nate’s fingers drummed excitedly on his glass. He stood up and walked around the table, eyes fixed on Perrier’s giant portrait.

“Keeping that one under the table. There _are_ real criminals in the South of France, you know?” Nate observed. “Right. We need intel from across the Atlantic. Parker and Eliot, you’re with me. We need to do some digging on the firms, find exactly which loopholes can be exploited eventually to get the district court to accept the case. Or simply find leverage. Sophie and Hardison you fly ahead of us and run recs, hook a potential shark. You know what to do.”

Hardison swung his shoulders and sang “Riviera, nous voilà!”.

“Yeah, we’ll figure out what to do there.” Nate grinned broadly before finishing his drink and making for the kitchen. “I’m in the mood for bridge. Let’s go steal a nest of vipers.”

“I thought we were stealing sharks,” Parker pondered, jumping to her feet.

Hardison’s dance fizzled out with Nate’s words.

“ _What_ did he say about bridges? Is he planning to steal the _Pont des Amants_ again? Because there are vehicles which my body is physically not made to ride and I could produce a medical certificate to-”

“It’s a card game, Hardison, like whist.” Sophie patted the younger woman on the shoulder. “He was thinking of _panier de crabes_. You keep the general fishy idea in French.”

Parker made a small “oh” and pushed Hardison out of the way to move to the counter, dragging Sophie along. Eliot’s growling stomach and the person attached to it followed suit.

“Does anyone want fish?”

 

 ***

 

The stewardess made an announcement about refreshments and it didn’t even put a glimmer of hope in his heart.

Near, Sophie was fumbling with her book and Hardison was miffed. The excitement of seeing the French coast had quickly faded the moment he realised it was April and it was going to be mildly cold and grey. Sophie argued that in France you could always swim whatever the longitude, with enough will-power, but it had made things worse.

He had retreated to Parker’s portrait, something he had been working on for quite some time now. The likeness was there, but that was about it. Parker was movement and she was best captured as such. The past weeks had seen him sneak several secret doodling sessions into practically every one of their cons, in an attempt to find a posture that would please him enough for a painting.

Alas, Parker was a dream to watch and a nightmare to draw. Hardison suspected she was suspecting his attempts.

“That’s beautiful.”

He instinctively put a hand on the sheet to keep the portrait out of Sophie’s eyesight and the grifter crooked a charming smile.

“Don’t give me that. You know you’re gifted.”

“I know.” 

Although he would seek Eliot’s comments often, the art-thief’s meant definitely more.

Sophie knew about art.

To an almost academic extent, if the notes she had given him on the Davids were anything to go by. He had tried to read a little more afterwards, but he was mostly interested in what it could teach him in terms of techniques. It was shameful, sometimes, the way he would cut a masterpiece in his mind, just to understand how the painter had thought out the volumes and the shadows.

Sophie sunk deeper in her seat, slipping a finger between the pages of her book and adjusting her head against the cushion. In the mood for a chat, apparently. Hardison involuntarily mirrored her position, which was much more uncomfortable than expected.

“I can’t draw. _Really_ want to. I haven’t had the inspiration or time to try since I was-” she chuckled and looked up with feigned annoyance. “Probably your age. It just doesn’t take.”

“So you just gave up?”

Sophie never read as an autodidact, but reading Sophie was a science as precise as cloud gazing. He had always imagined her with lots of shawls and hand gestures being taught about _sfumato_ and _imprimatura_ by a renown professor in Berlin. Or her father could have been a painter. No idea.

Occasionally, Sophie’s past was a game to him, much like the aliases he was creating for the team.

He looked at her intently, genuinely waiting for an answer. She had a sheepish pout that slowly grew into an eager smile, most distressing for Hardison. Sophie was scary. 

“I found other ways to appreciate art.”

“Ah, yes. _Stealing.”_

Sophie bit her lower lip, repressing a wider grin, but tinged with nostalgia. In a glimpse, she seemed far away. Hardison thought she had all but forgotten about him or the plane they were on and was ready to go back to Parker’s forehead, even under Sophie’s watch. He cleaned the line of Parker’s left cheekbone wondering if indeed Sophie was as bad as she seemed at drawing. It was jarring. Could be a removable trait of her Sophie persona.

Sophie’s past probably was a game to her as well. After a while, she looked up to his face, a playful spark in the eye that caught his attention.

“You know what you should do? Ask her permission to draw her. Simply. Parker’s quite gifted herself. Pick one hour or two off our working hours and pose for each other.”

“You mean, in the- in the-“

“In the morning or the evening. If you need to have Nate off your back, I can help.”

Sophie was finding great delight in the prospect and it threw Hardison even more off balance.

“Parker would never sit still for an hour...”

“Only people who never participated in life model session think of it as a still process for the model”, Sophie acknowledged, a hint of pedagogical excitement in the voice. Sophie could pull that kind of excitement pretty well. “You can change pose every five minutes, try dancing and miming, play dress-up, act… Or you can slump with a Victorian air to you and be pretty for an hour. The idea is to capture movement. It’s quite fun. Even with clothes on.”

Hardison opened his eyes wide and dove into the drawing, trying to consider the suggestion without the latter remark, otherwise it would become unmanageable. Not that Parker would particularly mind dancing naked. But he was in search of something they both could share with fair easiness. And prancing around without his clothes on, even in a studio, was not Hardison’s most enjoyed hobby. Eliot would probably do it.

Goofing around with Parker however was one of the things they were excellent at doing together. Working obviously, but goofing and annoying Eliot, they managed pleasantly well. And he would never refuse an opportunity to practice at whatever he was good at.

A smile was creeping on his lips when he realised what Sophie had let on.

“Wait. What do you mean ‘people who never participated in life model session’?”

Sophie was smirking between her book’s pages, an historical novel about some French woman, not paying an ounce of the attention she should be paying to the topic at hand.

“Soph- Sophie, do I have to stay away from certain art galleries? Don’t kid me with that stuff. I once had to fight my subconscious for a month, a month! Because my Nana suggested I imagined my class naked for a presentation. It stuck. Sophie?”

How long exactly this flight was and how eager Sophie was to make him her distraction in the meantime, Hardison had no idea.

 

***

 

“Hey.”

Nate jumped on his stool, almost spilling on the floor the stack of papers they had managed to sneak past the lawyer’s attention. Parker sat beside him, extending an arm to pick an apple lying on the table. Nate gave her a short controlled look and she bit into the apple.

“Eliot is wrapping things up with the lawyer. Don’t you want to see this?”

Nate was leafing through the pages, his pencil stopping on some parts, but never taking notes like Sophie.

“There were other cases you know”, he mumbled without looking up. “Other people who bought ships from them and lost everything. Some because of prescription, some because of unreliable forensics. We’re going to need an awful lot of money if we want to pay them back.”

Money they would have to let go eventually. She was not going to like this case. Although Cannes usually meant shiny things worn by old people, or rather not worn and put into under-secured safes. She sniggered and Nate gave her a funny look which did nothing for her sniggering.

The chances to have fun were considerably higher.

She swapped the apple from her right to left hand and repositioned herself on the stool to balance, Nate’s alarmed gaze following her movements. And her thoughts progression, perhaps. Nate had a tendency to do that. She had come to ask him something and he knew it.

“Eliot doesn’t feel comfortable with this one”, she started, unsure. The pencil bounced lightly on the table when Nate let go of it and she picked it up, feeling its weight. “He was having a beer with the mark. He never does that.”

Nate searched her face for half a second, thoroughly, as if she was a hall of people, and lowered his eyes just before taking off his com.

“He’s not comfortable in Europe. Very diverse and mobile people, from Russia, from the Netherlands sometimes. Many faces, many conflicted interests. Europe is small.”

The earbud was rolling under his finger and Parker was tempted to find hers in her pocket and play with it. But it would have meant letting go of the apple or the pencil and she was just starting to feel the balancing point she could use to spin it in the air the way Eliot did.

“American bad guys mostly want to make money”, Nate continued. “And the bad guys we met in Europe... Europe seems to have pasts, plural. It adds layers. It’s not even wrapped in mystery or time or movement, like other continent he worked in. Like a pond, it is set and overlapping and old and small. And literally hypocrite.”

Nate stopped her fingers before she could try and flick the pencil. He took it from her hands and put it beside the earbud on the table, equidistant from both extremities. The trick to finding the balancing point, but he had omitted the unequal weighting.

“ _Hypocrites_ in Greek was the name of the performer, who had a mask”, he carried on, pushing the earbud closer to the pencil and making it tilt on the table. Parker’s focus on the pencil was broken.  “It’s not a trait; it’s a trade. And it has always bothered him.”

And now it was bothering her. Like the ill-placed earbud near the pencil.

“I like Europe because of the old and hypocrite stuff”, she confessed.

Nate was looking at her with his big father-like eyes, eyebrows slightly up, furrows in the forehead. She was never quite sure if the mess of hair above was part of the package but it helped.

“Well”, he dragged the consonant, finishing with a proper disappearance of his lower lip under his upper lip. “Eliot does what he does because of _people_. That’s his retribution, how he rolls. If they swap faces...”

From the pencil and the earbud, a sharp cry came and Nate glowered at it before putting the com back into his ear.

“Who’s shouting?”

Parker replaced her earbud just in time to catch Sophie’s half frustrated, half bemused answer from across the Atlantic.

_...did not complete the crash course in British nose laughing I gave him on the train ride. I apologise for any inconvenience._

From much closer, this side of the Atlantic, Eliot sneered.

“You have a deal to complete”, Nate retorted. “Remember?”

_Yeah, and the guy is actually cool. I hate to use him._

“We’re not using him.” Nate had resumed his study of the papers before him, his pencil dropping in rhythm with Hardison continuous babbling about suites and Sophie’s occasional French sighs. “Just making sure American Justice does its job.”

“By stealing documents”, Parker added and beamed, dreamy. “Though that was pretty fun, did you see how Eliot let go of the whole suitcase and it crashed open and-“

 _I’m not Sophie, okay?_ Eliot muttered under his breath. _Why did she have to go before us, huh? We could have used another grifter._

 _Sweetie?_ Sophie answered to Hardison in Cannes.

“Because we need someone to ‘sweetie’ Hardison across the ocean”, Nate sighed in Boston.  “There’re trying to get us a stage.”

 _For the second act, certainly,_ Sophie chuckled.

“We don’t even have a name for the con yet”, Parker twitted.

 _Huh? Nothing, talking to myself,_ Sophie cooed. _I was just saying how you get no second chance with honeymoons._

Nate cleared his throat and urged Eliot on the com:

“Send the man away, he already agreed. We have a plane to catch.”

 _Hon, I’m sorry we cannot stay there._ Hardison was wailing at the other end, the French one, in a fake British accent. _I know how important it was for you, sugarplum of my heart._

Nate practically choked on air and Eliot cussed, which complicated a little more his goodbyes to the mark.

Perched both feet on the stool, Parker shook her head, dismayed. Hardison was not a good grifter.

 _Oh, I’m-_ In France,Sophie was fighting off despair or laughter, Parker couldn’t tell. _Well, I was really looking forward to. But I understand you did your best you-_

Nate put the unmarked sheets back into the file and half tumbled off the chair, gathering blindly everything that was lying on the table and slipping it in the suitcase.

“Hum, guys, seriously. Hurry up. Bring all your stuff here. Hardison asked for more equipment and we have to transport all of this to the airport.”

 _Come on, it’s not that much, I got you a com connection across the ocean, the least you can,_ Hardison answered on cue, before backpedalling. _Hm, I mean, yes,I would pay that much if it... meant pleasing my-_

Nate bounded towards the stairs, under Parker’s curious squint.

“You know, let them wrap up”, Nate cried. “No need to make it difficult for them by chattering inside their head. I have not finished packing yet.”

And he disappeared upstairs.

 _Teddy, they really don’t need to hear about that,_ Sophie’s unhappy voice rang. _We can manage._

“Hu”, Parker assessed. “Hardison? Nate is being weird again.”

_Yeah, you noticed, Mama-ma chérie, don’t get upset. Thank you, she’s going to be fine after a glass or two at the bar._

 

***

 

Nate’s luggage included (almost):

-          Sophie’s favourite shirt, whose upper buttons Parker had accidentally ripped off while trying to save her from a retail cart and that Nate had retrieved from the tailor at last;

-          new headphones for Hardison because he did not trust French labelling;

-          Parker’s stack of travel board games for the train from Nice to Cannes, which she didn’t want in her bag since Eliot had made fun of them;

-          Eliot’s Panama hat and case which he had entrusted to Nate for the exact same reason;

-          a notebook Sam had picked with Maggie for Nate’s last birthday with his family;

-          a little too much pain for him to carry around.

When he zipped his travelling bag, the content was exactly the same it had been for fifteen years before then. Clothes, shaving and cleaning necessities, and the book that happened to lie on his nightstand at the moment.

 

***

 

Sophie did get her glass after all but it was more as a reward for having guided Hardison through this mess of a grift. She could have pulled it on her own, but the young man had insisted. He wanted to fiddle with the hotel communications and he was probably right about how it could be used later.

The hotel bar was luxurious and European and it was difficult for her not to travel back to other times, more careless and dangerous times.

Hardison slurping the last drop of his cocktail prevented any escape from reality. Sighing, she reached out to readjust his collar and he looked up, questioning.

“I do love the scarf”, she hummed. “It was a good choice.”

She could not exactly compliment him on the grift, but he had a knack for dressing, she had to grant him that. Everything looked good on him. Much like Parker. Which was thirty-seven percent of the grift already.

Hardison flashed her a dazzling smile.

“I know, right? Eliot kept coming at me after I bought it. But it’s perfect.” He felt the blue fabric, cotton, and fluffed it delicately. “It just tells everything I need to tell about the character. He’s not a toy-boy, he’s a winner, he’s the man, ‘namean?”

Sophie was not sure she knew what ‘namean was supposed to mean, so she answered with a pitiful nod.  Hardison was unstoppable about Teddy Grant, his character, which Sophie could have excused if the hotel’s gorgeous interior had been less interesting than Hardison’s imaginary biography. 

“He’s the one who gets his girlfriend on a surprise flight to Italy and book them a room to the Carlton for their honeymoon. He’s a romantic, but an active one. But chill and relax and you could tell him anything.”

The clients were interesting as well. Particularly those burly things waiting near the door and paying close attention to the woman a few tables behind Hardison, nibbling at her drink and browsing on her phone alternatively. Sophie discretely scanned the room before going back to the woman.

“He’s so chill he won’t react if he finds his girl in bed with the hot French waiter from the little romantic restaurant.”

“And the lady boss of summer street scams.”

Hardison stopped gesticulating and seemed to consider the option for a second before shrugging.

“Or the lady boss of summer street scams. You get me –him. The point is, he knows how to be chill even around criminals in his bed. And that’s what I’m counting on to take our guy out.”

Sophie prodded his right shoulder with her handbag.

“No, Hardison, I mean, behind you, at the bar, is the lady boss of summer street scams, Fiona Barbousse.”

Hardison froze, suddenly very aware of how noticeable his height was when he was animated and cobalt. The shirt was gorgeous and garish; that was the point of Teddy.

“Okay”, Hardison squeaked.

And shrunk on the spot, prompting Sophie to look around in panic.

“What are you doing? Don’t hunch like that, you look like you’ve been drinking in the middle of the day.”

“Well, we have”, he whispered. “Does she know your face?”

Sophie finished her glass with aggravated haste. Every piece was now falling into place and they needed to quicken the pace of the con. Well, start the con. Running the recs was always the most tedious part.

She needed the thrill, now and here, which was still uneasy to wrap one’s mind into considering how dead the city was _hors saison_. Find the fun where you can. Or she needed to screw Nate, which was not happening anytime soon if he had done what she suspected he had done with the accommodations.

“Hopefully not. But I think we will be able to use her.”

Hardison gave her a tilt of the head, silently asking “How come.”

Sophie leant forward, her voice dropping into a murmur.

“She’s a perfect fit for Perrier. Her scams are very well oiled. She’s not dangerous enough to be priority one for the authorities. She’s always interested in quick money-making scams, new partners. Her strength relies on her ability to run all kinds of small-scale scams on the side.”

Hardison bared his teeth with glee.

“She’s our way in the shark pond. We have ourselves a partner...”

Sophie clicked her tongue.

“We are not calling it the shark pond."

 

***

 

“I hate trains”, Parker sighed.

“I hate you.” Eliot foamed and jabbed a shoulder in her direction, held back by his travelling bag and Hardison’s equipment. “God help me, I hate you so much right now.”

Parker recoiled a little. She remembered the Greek’s actor mask and how Eliot hated it. Half an instinct propelled her forward, toward Nate, to ask again, resume the demonstration and know. Nate put a thought in her head, just a tiny thought she had never suspected existed anywhere and it confused her.

She never tried to understand Eliot because she had never needed to. They were the same, often. And when they weren’t the same, they clicked.  She wondered if the hitch Nate had let in her mind felt like the hooks Sophie left in marks’ minds. But Nate was busy on the phone, leading them out of the train station into the small-scaled stuffed traffic of the town.

Everything felt so much smaller in Europe.

“I didn’t drool on your shirt”, she poorly scolded. “You did.”

Eliot hissed between gritted teeth and let her jog to Nate, without another word.

“And you are sure it would be open. Whatever the hour?” Nate was tipping his hat back on his neck to scratch his hairline when Parker caught up with him and he silently questioned her. Unable to express in looks, much less in words, what was happening inside her head, she looked straight before her, between the buildings, finding small comfort in knowing they were walking towards the sea.

“ _Fine. Merci encore. Je vous en prie._ _Bonne journée à vous aussi_ ”, Nate concluded with a resigned polite smile that made him look more French but did nothing for his accent. He flicked his cellphone shut and frowned at Parker. “Could you please stop squabbling?”

“And I hate you too!” Eliot’s bark unexpectedly rang from behind them, stifled by horns and French bad temper, as if he had waited his moment to blow. “You knew the train was just as bad as in Russia.”

Nate sighed and checked his phone for a map, looking up at the street’s names and navigating between big metal balls that were supposed to keep the cars from parking. The buildings were light and low, rarely over five stores, and smelt of sun and sea.

“Sophie did warn me it would be like a trip back to the 80s. Not Russia. I did not deem it necessary to rent a car from the airport.” Nate hit a few keys before bringing the phone to his ear and stealing a glance towards Parker. “Sophie? Yeah, we’re here.”

Parker could not help smiling upon making out Sophie’s Sophie voice at the end of the line. Not the one she had on cons, like when she pretended to be married to Hardison. The one that had that peculiar rhythm that was Sophie and not even British. The sea appeared between two rows of flats, in the middle of the streets. There were palm trees, seagulls and a little more sun.

“I’m going to send you an address and I want you and Hardison to bring all your luggage there.” Nate was bossing around. “Hmm?  No, we keep the room, but with decoy generic stuff. Glitzy but cheap. Can you do that? See you in half an hour.”

The hour and a half would let them time to wait for thirteen minutes at a bus station, meet and greet old people walking about the seaside (especially Eliot) and have a great ride on a double-decked bus long the _Croisette_ walk, that followed the small bay on one and a half mile. Hotels and beaches, more palm trees, more air.

Mood considerably lightened up, Parker bounced behind Nate, following him following his phone, across a deserted square and small brown houses and shaded streets and high ugly flats, until they reached again the seaside. Further up the street on their right, Hardison and Sophie were sitting on a low wall, gazing at the sea across the street, waiting.

Parker let out a yelp that got Hardison’s attention and she ran up to him, bags flying with her and grazing against the wall. Her whole body carried by impetus hit him confidently, almost knocking him off his feet. Instead of “ouch”, he simply called “hullo Mama” and it made her feel warm.  

Eliot came in strides behind, far ahead of Nate, past them and into the courtyard of a block of apartments, to which the low wall unconvincingly marked the entrance.

Parker lifted her face to Hardison’s grin for Eliot before letting go of him and walking to Sophie, still attentive against the grey sky and greyer sea. Parker touched her shoulder in way of greeting and Sophie answered with a soft smile that did not quite reach her eyes. Started but interrupted as if the very image of Parker had stopped the smile from spreading.

Sophie was studying her, digging and fiddling, very delicately and with her eyes only. Her hand found Parker’s elbow and Parker knew she would need to talk to Sophie later about Greek masks and hooks.

“Eliot tried to fling me off the bus”, Parker stated, carrying her bags to the front door of the block, where Eliot was trying to tie his pig tail. “Where are we?”

“Eliot!” Hardison called from the sidewalk, still waiting with Sophie for Nate.

“She asked me!” Eliot shouted, a red hairband between the teeth. “But the trees, the trees, man, they kept coming. That would have been a terrible way to go.”

Hardison and Sophie were left blinking at him, defeated, until Nate finally rounded the wall and walked past them into the courtyard. They scrambled to pick up their bags and hurried to the doors closing behind Eliot, in time to enter the lobby with the rest of the group. Once inside, they followed Nate up stairs and along the inner courtyard. They stopped before a small dingy door looking down on the courtyard and all stared hesitantly at the door while Nate was feeling the nearest window frame for something.

He produced a small key and opened the door to a cupboard.

Well, not exactly a cupboard, but it was a small and dark apartment. With white walls.

“That was anticlimactic,” Eliot confessed, while tip-toeing inside. “What the hell is this?”

Nate walked across the plainly decorated room, skirted around the sofa bed, opened the curtains of a window as large as the diminutive room and announced:

“Our home for the next few days.”

Hardison’s “what?” sounded like a deflating balloon.

 

***

 

Sophie pulled the cover to her chest, her body vainly shifting to accommodate foresights of insomnia. Parker, fallen into unconsciousness the moment her head hit the pillow, was as silent in sleep as in life.

It was like having no one by her side.

Nate had exposed roughly the con to them. Roughly meaning half the evening had been spent trying to explain how they would play it like a bridge game, and they would use a similar setting of four players, two teams, dummies, dealers, tricks, etc. Two of them were to infiltrate Perrier’s and Barbousse’s entourage, attract their attention to a bogus scheme Nate was putting together with Parker and Hardison, mounted for the sole purpose of being a pearl of brilliance and evil. Parker had stolen the recipe from one of USA’s very own terror-seeking organisations; banks. Perrier and Barbousse would need to invest quickly and boldly, leaving Hardison to rob them, Perrier to his last euro, Barbousse just enough to shake her out of her impassibility. Carefully placed manipulations would lead right to Perrier, and Barbousse would no doubt sue the life out of him, probably for a scam she had committed herself.

The other half of the evening had consisted in sailing awkwardly around each other. Nate was to share the sofa bed in the living room, while Sophie and Parker had been offered the king-size bed in the adjoining room. The boys had been as childish as expected.

For the entire duration of the argument, Parker was out on an “errand”, probably stealing their rich neighbour from across the courtyard, not so lucky earner of a Baccarat chandelier. Nate had looked stricken and guilty while lining his bags against the wall, trying to save space and sanity from the fight.

Nate had wanted to be with Sophie. Genuinely. Except she had never stayed the night before, and conversely. She had read the realisation on his face, the envy and shame fighting between his brows, until it defeated him absolutely. He gave up on offering anything but a contrite blink as comfort and it hurt her more than she cared to admit.

The friends with benefits arrangement had been put there to hide unsightly things. Lying to their friends. Nothing to lie about if there is nothing underneath.

In truth, she had never expected him to react differently, to be so brazenly confused about them and follow her around like a happy idiot. She wanted him happy, she just didn’t want him to be so foggy. If anyone asked her, he deserved the slack and he deserved the punishment the non-relationship implied.

The sound of a door opening and closing disturbed the deadly silence. She couldn’t even hear Nate’s snore from here. The room seemed encased in cotton wool, all white and complacent.

Eliot did not deserve any of the punishment he was getting from Nate and consequently Parker. She was the one to snap on a word, liar, which was the truth, which was a feeling, which was her life. He had not cared whether she had minded, not hesitated a second before throwing it, even in jest.

When Hardison mocks her lying, it feels like putting on Imogen’s surcoat. When Nate teases her on the subject, it feels like slipping into Beatrice’s tongue. Parker seems to float through Sophie’s lies like Ariel earns Prospero’s words of release. Eliot calling her a liar feels like the reality it represents.

It feels like nausea spread thin on her entire being.

The hair at the back of her neck moved, not straightening up, but being gently blown over. She froze, without tensing, and waited.

She didn’t want to talk, not sure what to do with a Parker busying her unexpected watch with Sophie’s hair. Previous experiences of sharing beds with the blonde had established Parker would fiddle with covers and pillows mostly. Sophie’s hair on rare occasions. Sophie had found Parker enjoyed reacting in her company. More likely learning how to react and to measure what was normal and considered casual.

Talking definitely fell under the normal category and Sophie could not help feeling a fraud for how plaited the natural evolution of their interactions remained for her. Parker was waiting for a certain Sophie when she was talking more personally to her, a persona she had established way back when they had been strangers.

Touching was a form of jeopardy, her tools of the trade. One pat for a smile, a caress for a check.

Sophie lived on grazing and almost. Maybe not lived, but thrived, was most stable, under what was left open. Hence the lying. A fair part of the lying.

She had a nagging feeling this was not good enough for Eliot. Nate was foggy about the lying.

Parker’s fingers were fiddling with her hair.

Knitting and unknotting.

Prickling and twirling.

With such delicacy.

Sophie could feel herself dreaming the tiny sensation.

She didn’t feel herself falling asleep.

At the breakfast table the following morning, Nate started losing it. The team was lounging in various state of disarray, some because of jetlag, others because of spending a night outside a five star hotel. Sophie because of herself.

Parker was sitting on the balcony guardrail, a leg dangling above a palm tree, eating cereals and looking down on the courtyards. Hardison was snacking around, going from the counter to the fridge to the table to the fridge, not settling for a minute. Nate and Eliot were brooding at the table, dedicated to their coffee.

Sophie was doing her utmost to ignore Nate’s morning scheming face, and the fact she was at the receiving end of said scheming face. At some point, she had to answer for her bouts of temper on Saturday night, one way or another, and preferably another way she was not expecting, lovingly hand-picked by Nate, no doubt. Her role was to make the most of it afterwards.

“Sophie, Eliot. You are going to play con men in our con,” Nate seriously announced, losing half of a toast to his coffee. “Not salesmen.”

Eliot calmly emerged from what was decidedly his third coffee and mumbled even more seriously:

“We are con men.”

“Tell me this is a metaphor”, Sophie sighed, giving Nate a pointed look from behind her own cup. He had the decency to blush.

Hardison, whose endless shuffle had placed him precisely behind Nate and in front of Sophie at that moment, was scowling at her to assess whether or not to be upset by her words. She smiled innocently and Nate turned his head to Hardison, confused.

“Look, nothing fancy”, Nate carried on, facing her again. “I want you to play exactly who you are and from the start. You don’t sell yourself as anything but crooks. They want to hire you and we’re able to get them exactly where we want them to be.”

Sophie raised an eyebrow. That was not as unexpected as she had speculated. Odd. His mind was elsewhere.

“At least, we can go wild in Europe”, Sophie admitted.”Less cameras, less cops, dark paved streets, small businesses...”

“Why on Earth would you want to go wild? We already escaped Death.”

Sophie was unimpressed and surprised by the capital Hardison had put there.

“Sophie and I are already wanted here.” From the balcony, Parker shouted as way of information.  “So that’s blown.”

Sophie put her empty cup on the table with emphasis.

“Parker, you can hang a giant sign on the balcony if you want to be more discreet about it!”

“That doesn’t mean you can go wild”, Eliot was arguing across the table. “I’m the one who beats the people that go after you when you go wild. So, _no_ , don’t go wild.”

Nate made a dubitative grimace, not looking at her, and added apologetically:

“Considering the reasons for which they want Sophie, doing worse than what she did would definitely qualify as going wild. Sophie, stay away from Marineland.”

“You don’t know all the facts. I resent your tone.”

As if it was her fault.

“This is not-“ Eliot seemed about to bite off her face. “I don’t want to know about it.”

On the balcony, Parker yawned loudly and muttered something about playing a thief for once.

 

***

 

Frances and Rob, as Hardison had decided they would be named, for he certainly envisioned himself as some sort of God bequeathing life to his characters, turned out to be Frank and Robbie, an Australian Oklahoma-born charmer and a staggeringly fake Sicilian Croatian black widow.

Sophie had been stupefyingly right when she had argued Perrier was exactly the kind of guy to be wary of woman partners and suggested Eliot as his hook rather than her. The swap had been made. Perrier had taken an instant liking to Eliot in the guise of Frank and if he had not been convinced by his accent, the surfer aura seemed to make up for it.

Fiona was a hard sell, not because of a specific distrust towards con artists which were her everyday partners, but because she seemed to have seen it all. She was simply not impressed by Sophie and what she had to offer, in the limit of what Sophie deemed safe to disclose at this stage of the con. Nate would not have believed it, had he not seen with his own eyes just how bored with her trade Fiona Barbousse was.

It hurt the grifter’s professional pride, certainly, and prompted a flash match of silent contempt across a crowded square between grifter and hitter. Considering the con relied on both Sophie’s and Eliot’s ability to have Barbousse and Perrier go exactly where they were needed, Sophie’s difficulties were a hindrance to say the least.

Something else bothered him about Barbousse. This reluctance could well indicate she was watched, and if not by the authorities, by a competitor. They could use that or it could go haywire. Sophie had been relentless in her show-casing, pulling five different types of street scams off her hat before Fiona’s uninterested eyes and Eliot’s reluctantly awed glare. One-woman ice-cream gang, broken keys, switcheroo... Eliot would have been taking notes, had he not been crossed at her for beating him by two scams.

Because Frank and Robbie had placed bets on who could out-scam the other and though Eliot had been the quickest, it was becoming obvious Sophie wanted a knock out by masterclass.

They could not apologise to each other, therefore they were grifting the life out of each other. Sophie had a terrible influence on Eliot.

After an afternoon of wooing the con woman unsuccessfully and succulently conning the weak consumer, Sophie had come to Nate. He was playing bridge with his selves and, without a stall, Sophie requested the permission to go down a little tougher on Barbousse. Tougher meant the kind of women he would have been perfectly happy to put behind bars, even today. Tougher meant Annie Kroy and the likes.

Eliot was cooking something in the open kitchen, doing his best not to pay attention to them. And since Eliot is always good at what he does, Nate could be sure he was indeed not listening to a word between the two of them. Nate could not hope for his intercession.

It was Sophie, Nate and his inability to protect her from whatever tightrope walking she was undertaking.

“Sophie, we said no mafia.”

“And I agreed. I’m not changing the plan, just announcing a stronger hand.”

Sophie put her hand on his forearm and Nate knew he did not stand a chance. Her fingers brushed down to his wrist, palm on the brink of his palm, still not embracing, but close. This, oddly, felt more like partnership than whatever they were trying to carry on while no one was looking.

He begrudgingly nodded and her fingers lingered on his wrist for a little longer, her way of apologising.

There was an uncertain moment, when Nate felt Eliot was about to step away from the corner and say something, but Sophie scampered out of the room into the bedroom and closed the door to change.

The curt chopping that came afterwards from Eliot’s knife told him what Eliot very much wanted to make known to Sophie. Eliot cooked with expectation, ready to put forward what he had not said. Nate was not paying attention to his game; it bothered him, taking on a case when the emotional integrity of the team was askew. Parker was unstable often, Hardison over-invested, Sophie a gambler, but Nate wasn’t used to worrying about Eliot. 

Naturally, Nate shuffled the cards for the con; Hardison and Sophie; Eliot and Parker. He may have not counted on himself being in the middle and eliciting certain defence mechanisms from Parker, or Eliot, or Hardison for that matter. Sophie was fairly used to his probing by now and little could upset the course she had set for them. Nate was not used to being fiddled with the way Sophie was fiddling with him, however enjoyable and accepted it was on his part, and as a consequence he had been more adventurous and inconsequential than usual in managing his team.

Sophie would know what to do, but she was busy finding characters that would please Fiona Barbousse – and the hitter.

The door to the bedroom clicked open and Eliot looked up to catch Sophie’s attention. Only it was Robbie who floated out and fled to Fiona, a whiff of wood and metal following her.

The men exchanged a quick look that would probably have been longer and uneasy, had it not been for Parker coming back and bumping into Sophie on the doorstep. A few words were exchanged and Parker waltzed in, landing on a chair beside Nate.

“Parker. Where have you been?”

“Out.”

He looked at her askance and Parker mirrored his immobility.

“Parker...”

“Look” she burst, frowning at him with a conviction that shushed him and Eliot’s cutting.

The man’s dedication to completing his _ratatouille_ despite the drama happening around was worthy of praise.

”Look, do you have any idea how rich old people are in this town? Their security systems are a joke, their safes are a joke; their dogs are adorable, their buildings are adorable; they have all these edges and bars and frills everywhere. It’s like climbing in a club. The people are old and short-sighted; they won’t even notice one or two stones missing. I need to steal otherwise I go mad.”

“Parker”, Nate tried to reason. “We don’t steal from honest people. I’m serious. You’ll have to give it back! You can’t-“

“Did Sophie have a thing with every one of her ex-partners?” Parker inquired out of the blue.

Even Eliot’s furious pouring of olive oil managed to choke. Nate was sure he had popped a nerve.

“Oh look”, Nate feebly cried. “A King! This pack of cards needs me."

 

***

 

Fiona Barbousse inhaled sharply before drawing out the smoke from her cigarette. Hobby of the bored or the addict. They were the same, Nate would say. Sophie could probably argue with that. But taking as examples her own assembled personas was a logical fallacy even she would not comic.

And Sophie never felt like using her past victims.

Many of them were still family.

With a snap of her fingers, Fiona requested the papers Robbie had been reviewing for her and Sophie slowly waddle to bring them to her. The key to Robbie was her slowness. Fiona was suspicious of sleights of hands. A smile born too quickly and she might ask you to repeat it, merely to judge its sincerity.

Fiona took the papers and shook her head as she followed the lines, a habit which exasperated Sophie. Robbie didn’t care.

Fortunately, the papers constituted the last move in their game. In a few hours, Fiona and Perrier would meet to make the fund transfer and Hardison would only have to switch account. Although to say he would “only” switch account would not be quite fair to the amount of work the boy had done. Nate had basically asked him to have an entire tailor-made chain of events ready to be inserted into the two crooks’ lives. And have it work.

Fiona handed back the documents to Robbie with indifference.

Robbie opened a file and slid the papers inside, looking around to find Fiona’s errand boy who had nothing of a boy.

“Robbie.” Fiona’s voice was always cool, always aggravating. “Could you take care of it?”

Sophie wavered, but Robbie took her time to give an indifferent nod. She would take the file to Perrier’s boy.

Exiting the warehouse with the file, Sophie decided this meant something had changed in the game. Nothing had been overlooked on her part, and she knew Eliot would not endanger her in any way, no matter how crossed with her he acted at times.

Sophie followed the bank, taking notes of the boat’s names there. Some more romantic than others. More than once she almost tripped on the thick mooring lines snaking there, but carried on her pace, evenly. She had been followed from the warehouse.

A hundred yards after, she halted before a small boat unironically named “Marina II”, a pretty thing all wood and lacquer unceremoniously placed between white blazing whales of a boat.

Sophie’s breath caught in her throat; Eliot was putting away mooring lines inside.

This was not the plan. But this was Eliot and Eliot knew her.

He looked up, a glint of surprise passing his eyes, and acknowledged her with a nod, without a hint of recognition. Robbie asked him if he was working with Mr. Marais. Frank confirmed it. Robbie carefully climbed on-board and handed him the documents. She stood erect before him, and waited before announcing this was from Mrs. Gréco. Frank nodded a little too gravely.

Sophie would probably have quipped about the utter unprofessionalism of the change, even among thieves.

Robbie turned on her heels and stepped out of the boat, not even bothering to ignore her shadow, who was nearby shoved between a tree-pot and a glass collector.    

Thirty minutes later, Sophie found another shadow waiting for her on one of the itineraries she used to walk home.

“Not followed?” Eliot’s raspy voice came out of a bush.

Sophie shook her head and he stepped out, a jacket over his mariner outfit.

“What happened?” she asked.

Eliot found instinctively the tip of her elbow, guiding her under the streetlights and scanning the area.

“Perrier learnt of Barbousse’s long dark lady who had set foot in the city same day I did.”

“He got suspicious. What did you say?”

“That it was wrong and that I had been in the city for a week”, Eliot sniggered. “Except drunk in my best mate’s basement in _Le Cannet_ to celebrate his bachelor’s week.”

Sophie could not hide her disappointment.

“He believed that?”

“I’m a surfer. That must be the kind of hobby he expects from me. Stereotypes hurt.” He trailed off, pivoting sideways to keep by her side on a narrow sidewalk. “And you?”

Sophie let a genuine smile draw her lips. Robbie smiled so little.

“I guess Fiona heard of Perrier’s sun-kissed surfer.” She softly wailed. “Or she is about to offer me a position as vice-president of her thief corporation. She’s a tough read.”

They walked side by side in silence, his fingers still on her elbow, keeping her close and safe.

Eliot would fight with her because he considered her someone the team needed to be protected from.

Who was she to argue with it?

Earlier this week, in Nate’s apartment, because of a pair of Ruby Slippers from Oz, she had chosen the lesser of the two evils. Of the many evils. Of the many words she could have used and the many gestures she could have wielded. Stepping away, retreating, boxing it and putting it away was the least damage she could do to him.

She wished she could let him figure it out. That, essentially, she agreed with his distrust. Essentially, and then it became too intricate. Like a web.

She could not make him trust her.

It was a proof of what they built together, as a team. During the months when Nate left them orphan and angry, they bonded over resentment and cooking, overlooking the one thing that had been rampaging across her relationships for twenty years or so; trust.

_-Eliot, you do trust me, don’t you? -That’s not the point._

And it had always been her job to ensure it never was the point. Wherever she is, there is usually too much noise and excitement to worry about trusting her. That was her job.

Her job also included making him understand, now, why the lying. But to do so she needed more manipulation.

She could not make him trust her.

They finally reached the square behind their block. A truck was selling pizza on one corner; young people were huddling on a bench. Eliot was watching her.

“You can’t control people”, he said, releasing her elbow.

She took a deep breath and almost walked away.

“Most of the time, I don’t need to”, Sophie answered. “I nudge. I never make someone do something they don’t want to do already. There’s one thing I need to control and call me selfish for wanting it controlled as well. But without that, I cannot be _trusted_ to care about people or protect them.”

He was shocked when she turned and touched her chest above the heart.

“In here.”

She tapped her temple.

“And here.”

He almost got angry.

She touches people like he punches people. To numb and incapacitate. Words and touches are her knuckles.

But she was also telling the truth.

She gave him an awkward smile and waited.

Sophie would have given him a dimpled smile and gone on her way.

 

***

 

Sophie walked in the living room, preparing to smell the air for Eliot’s cooking but did a double take upon seeing the cards scattered everywhere on the floor and table.

“Nate’s obsession with this game is getting out of hands.” She let out a whistle.”Did he lose against himself?”

Hardison popped up from behind the sofa where he was trying to retrieve cards.

“Parker got bored and tried to build the Louvre Pyramid in cards”, he explained, stepping across to stumble on Sophie. This apartment was preposterous in size; Sophie had just come in and not moved since.

“She obviously failed”, Sophie shot back tartly and moved to the table to start gathering the cards laying there.

“No, she succeeded and Nate got back from his successful business only to realise the game he had been playing since last night had been replaced by a pyramid”, Hardison admitted, witnessing Sophie threw a hand in the air in exasperation. “There was some yelling and storming out the window.”

“Oh. So, Nate’s obsession with this game is still getting out of hands? Did you even understand how the con was supposed to follow the rules? Am I the dummy?”

Eliot entered the room and cheered:

“No, Sophie, you’re the dealer.”

Sophie let out a small defeated sound and got back to gathering the cards. Eliot frowned and decided to ignore her, before bouncing to Hardison. 

“Hey, Augustine showed me how to prepare a Queen Hamam.” His eyes were shining with the force of a thousand stars.

“What?” Sophie squeaked. “What is that?”

“Queen Miam Miam?” Eliot turned to Sophie, embarrassed. “It’s a pastry from the north-west part of France.”

Sophie processed the information and came up with a doubtful “Kouign-Amman?”.

Eliot nodded proudly, but Sophie made a dismissive movement with her hand.

“I think massive nutritional weapon would be more appropriate a name. I don’t want this anywhere near Parker. She would probably want to steal the Festival after absorbing that much sugar.”

Eliot had gone positively red in the face and exploded.

“I don’t care! It’s a delicacy. And it’s brioche and sugar and I’ve never tasted something as sweet in my life. And then you eat it with a little _Poiré_ ”, he darted a finger at Sophie “–and Sophie if you say one word, I’mma take the crusty olive bread Jerome baked for me and break it on your head.”  

Nate’s voice came from the bedroom:

“Actually, that’s how you pronounce it. _Poiré._ I know my alcohol.”

Hardison, Sophie and Eliot looked at each other, before trotting to the bedroom entrance. Nate was lounging on the girls’ bed, face at the ceiling, a book opened on his chest and arm across the eyes.

“Yeah, you would”, Eliot furiously commented. “Do you want me to break the bread between you two? I assure you the pain will not be divided in two.”

Parker’s voice came from the ceiling.

“Is Jerome the guy who showed you around the docks? He was cute.”

Hardison, Sophie and Eliot looked up to the top of the large cupboard, where Parker was sitting as if on a chair.

“That-That was Jeremy and Françoise.”

You could see the confusion engulf Eliot, leaving him stranded and about isolate himself from the world. Sophie’s eyes were going from Parker to Nate, and from Nate to Parker, and progressively filling with delight.

Hardison took a step near the cupboard and offered an arm to Parker, who manoeuvred towards his side, bent in two under the ceiling, and gracefully dropped on his shoulder, standing up. He instinctively gripped her ankle and hip, grateful for her being so small.

She looked down on him with an immense smile and he shook his head, maybe admiring her more than he should when she was standing on his shoulder and her staying up solely depended on his not swaying. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other and he sensed she was about to let go. She pivoted and simply dropped into arms he extended so quickly he doubted they were his.

Parker was laughing her head’s off while he stood so terrorised about what had happened he could collapse to the ground with Parker and chain her there so that she never did that again. Parker jumped to her feet, patting his shoulder and he muttered under his breath:

“Mama, you completely mad. Please don’t do that to me ever again. Or warn me.”

Eliot was still paralysed beside him, apparently having given up on being a human since he was surrounded by concepts. Concept of stealing, acting, masterminding and geniusing rather than people. 

“Getting cosy with the locals?” Sophie teased while making for the bed. She sat beside Nate, who propped himself up on his elbow with a smirk and admired Eliot’s stricken face.

“Easy marks”, Sophie emphasised. “Especially if you have a portable lounging chair.”

Watching the red bloom on his face, like a cartoon kettle, was nothing compared to the joy of beholding his outburst.

“They are grandmas and grandpas! I don’t con grandmas!”

Parker gave Eliot a small tap on the back and left the room cackling, pulling Hardison by the hand.

“Mate, one of the Grans gave you a 400 bucks hat as a gift”, Hardison shouted over his shoulder. “I think you are the mark on this one.”

“Damn it, Hardison!”

 

***

 

The talk had actually started on the balcony. Parker had jumped across the guardrail, Nate had followed, up until the rail where he had bent and called her back. Hoisted up on the edge of the balcony, she had peaked, uncertain.

“What was that about?” Nate inquired, catching his breath before straightening up. ”I thought you didn’t do that anymore.”

He crouched down to sit closer to her and Parker climbed on the edge, feet apart to balance on the narrow space. Hunkered down and facing the courtyard, with her arms holding the rail, she looked like a finely wrought ornament.

“I don’t. Sophie explained to me you cannot run away.”

Nate approved silently.

“You have to walk away.”

Nate stopped approving.

“Wait, what?”

Parker turned her head toward him and narrowed her eyes.

“She might have to re-explain that part”, she pondered.

Then, without any warning, she jolted up and jumped over the rail, sending Nate on the floor. He glazed over, more concussed than surprised. Parker was already gliding toward the door to her and Sophie’s room, which looked onto the balcony.

Nate got up and entered behind her, picking up a book from a chair as he walked. _Mademoiselle de Maupin_. Of course.

“It’s Sophie’s”, Parker pointed out, sitting cross-legged at the end of the bed.

Nate edged closer, not letting go of the book.

“Do you know who the real Mademoiselle de Maupin was?”

“According to Sophie, one of History’s great grifters.”

Nate chuckled and bowed his head, muttering for himself “Who isn’t?”

“She was an opera singer and a criminal”, Nate explained.

“She faked her death by burning a nun’s corpse”, Parker added. “Classic.”

Nate winced.

“Parker, no. You don’t-“

But she was looking at him with an air of sticking to her opinion, which was new. Nate was intrigued. He didn’t know if it was the atmosphere, the overlong recs or the unusual setting which prompted so many of his team members to be so very set in their heart.

“Okay”, he conceded. “Classic.”

Parker squinted her eyes.

“But not perfect. D’you know how I’d do it?”

Nate had no time to answer before she was already launching into a complicated explanation involving drapes and a drawer only.

By the end of her exposé, provided with a demonstration that left Nate infinitely grateful Parker was a thief and not a contracted killer, Nate was lying on the bed with a migraine.

“I only wanted to explain about the cards.”

“Using Julie D’Aubigny?” Parker sounded defiant, perched on the cupboard.

Nate waved his hand and let it fall on his chest, surrendering.

“I understood”, Parker tried after a silence. “It was important to you. You do it for the game. It’s your thing, challenges and puzzles and enigmas. Just like Hardison does it for fun. I do it for the gold. Eliot and Sophie do it for the people.”

Nate didn’t open his eyes. It sounded odd, her voice coming from so far up.

“A grifter does it for the relationships”, Nate proclaimed bitterly. “As weird as it sounds. For the fluxes and the banter, the experiences.”

He stopped, remembering the very distinct feeling of intrusion he had the first time he saw Sophie apply make-up in his bathroom.

As young as the minute.

As cool as a god.

There was a nakedness close to crudity he could not quite enjoy yet. Be attracted to certainly and with the vicious familiarity of a man who had for the first time learnt not to trip on his partner’s slippers invariably left near the door.

Little conditionings he felt himself willingly falling into. Staged tenderness. Take away the shapes before the mirror and all you have is shadows running in the distance. Fixing an image there meant staying in front of the mirror and looking.

And looking.

He wanted the beauty of the process and physics and craft put into it, but not the reflection staring back at him. He wanted Sophie but had no idea how to be with her and not have him in the middle.  

“More than the people”, Nate finished a little more breathlessly that he wanted. “No, Eliot’s not a grifter. Eliot’s a charmer.”

“You’re getting as dramatic as Sophie. Does stuff even have value for grifters then?”

Nate cruelly snorted.

“They are no candy stripers! They buy a lifestyle and relations with money. But they still buy something.  Most grifters will tell you they do it for the thrill of it. And in the middle of everything that is changing in their life, sometimes you need to anchor thoughts and memories to objects.”

“So, to a grifter, everything has a value. And grifters are more likely to keep stuff.”

Nate lifted his arm from his face, just enough to peek at Parker on the dresser.

“Am I giving you a lesson in grifting right now? Because I’m sure Sophie could do a better job with all this motivation stuff.”

Parker shrugged and Nate removed his arm from his face, looking at her with curiosity.

“Parker what are you doing exactly?”

“Your job”, she offered with a neutral tone and cold stare that sparked something inside his brain.

In the living room, Eliot and Sophie were fighting about alcohol.

 

***

 

There is one thing Hardison hates more than the Star Trek reboot.

Actually they are many things.

Like the fact his Nana persists on sending him ugly ass sweaters for Christmas and it’s because he’s her favourite but it’s actually the worst side of being someone’s favourite.

Or the fact (recently unearthed) Nate scares the life out of him when he speaks in his sleep.

Or the fact Eliot and Parker don’t think cuddle sweaters are nice.

Or the fact Sophie doesn’t want to talk about which Doctor was her Doctor.

Or the fact he found out the account he created for the scam in Cannes contained three times what Nate expected and Hardison hadn’t seen it coming at all.

 

***

 

Eliot closed his phone and held it tightly.

“Perrier doubled-crossed me”, he announced flatly and slumped beside Hardison on the sofa. “He took a partner.”

Hardison’s typing was remarkably measured considering the situation.

“I traced the money back to Enzo T.’s shell companies.” Hardison lifted his eyes from the screen and gratified Nate and Sophie who were at the table, vindictive pouts in place. “So no, he did not simply double-cross us. He drew a cross on his chest for the axe not to miss it.”

And Hardison drew a vindictive cross in the air, turning to Eliot. Eliot gave him a woeful side look.

“He’s going to meet him tomorrow for brunch”, Eliot added. “Without me.”

Sophie was fretting at the table, sitting as close to Nate as she could without going over the edge.

“As will Fiona. She just texted me Perrier wanted to meet us for brunch”, she confirmed, despondent. “On an island.”

Parker, settled on the floor in front of Hardison and Eliot, was studying the ceiling with great dedication.

“Hmm. We sold the bad guys too good a plan so they double-cross us with really bad guys. Except the plan is a bomb waiting to explode in their face and the really bad guy probably just discovered it. Cool.”

“Oh boy”, Nate concluded, scribbling down a paper. “If only the mafia was as careful as us when they sign in on deals.”

“They are going to come down hard on our guys”, Eliot commented.

Hardison leant in closer to him and asked sotto voce:

“I don’t want to ask how hard, but I think I will have to. How hard?”

“Corsican?” Eliot huffed. “It’s going to be really messy and the axe you mentioned before could actually work as a metaphor. Or not. I remember that time when I was in a little village near-”

“Huhu”, Sophie cut him off with a finger held in the air, voice a little too thin for comfort. “We are not killing them.”

Parker let out a snort and bent forward to start playing with Hardison’s sandal scratch.

“Our bad guy deserves to die”, she said.

Eliot tilted his head, enough to bump into Hardison who was still annoyingly close, and shoved him away.

Truth was, a father and a husband had died in a vain boating incident.

“Hey, we don’t make that call”, Hardison answered, directing his gaze at Nate and Parker, a hint of warning in the voice and Eliot considered him a second with a swell of pride in the chest.

Parker was observing them in silence, worrying the tip of a loose thread on the shoe.   

“I agree with Hardison and Sophie”, Eliot settled and he glimpsed Sophie’s frame losing its tension.  “Blood for blood won’t bring anybody back and the family will not get a penny if everyone is dead and assets are frozen.”

“So, we’ll have to save them from us?” Parker asked, getting up and nudging Eliot and Hardison aside to sit between them.

Eliot could not help but smile.

“Well, from the mafia first”, Nate conceded and gave Sophie a pointed look. “Our wrath shall be belayed.”

Sophie appreciated the attention and regained her composure a little more, eyeing the team on the sofa and Nate before asking excitedly:

“So what’s the plan?”

A wicked grin blossomed on Nate’s lips and Eliot could not help thinking revenge is best served cold and their guys were going to taste it.

“Have you heard of the horses of Lake Ladoga?” Nate asked and stood up to the sofa, positioning himself in front of them, hand playing with the piece of paper from before.

“Lake Ladoga is situated in Russia near St. Petersburg and was used as ice road to reach Leningrad during the Second World War. The path across the frozen lake was known as the Road of life. Italian writer Curzio Malaparte describes in one of his fictional works an incident during which hundreds of panicked horses rushed to cross the lake, then liquid, only to be seized by fast forming ice. In the morning, their anguished and frozen heads were found sticking out of the creaseless surface.”

Sophie gave Eliot a pained look and he swallowed hard.

“I actually know this one”, Hardison indicated. “Physicist Hubert Reeves theorises it was a case of supercooling. Under certain conditions, water remains liquid below its freezing point. The moment a tiny imperfection is put into the water, anything a crystal can form around, like, let’s say, a horse hair or snow flake, pow! Crystallisation. It’s actually super cool, no pun intended, to make slushies.”

Sophie had walked up to Nate’s side, a doubtful crease on the forehead. She craned her neck to look upon his shoulder and peaked at the paper. Nate folded it before Sophie could read and she sighed:

“And how does that help us?”

Parker twittered and gestured to get Sophie’s attention:

“He’s going to throw them in a fast-icing lake and let them freak out!”

“That’s the spririt!” Hardison threw a fist in the air before stopping. “Wait, what?”

Eliot closed his eyes and emphatically growled.

“This is the French Riviera”, he scolded and turned his attention to Nate. “I hope to God you are talking metaphorically.”

Sophie’s dubious pout had become a mischievous grin and she trilled with anticipation.

“Parker’s right”, she laughed. “It’s the Ballroom Blitz!”

“The dog and the fireworks”, Parker confirmed, ecstatic.

“The Scooby-doo mob?”

Hardison sounded uncertain and, for once, Eliot was agreeing with the level of doubt in his voice.

“What?” Eliot hesitated, focused on Nate. “We’re just gonna confuse the hell out of them?”

“Nyess”, Nate admitted, slipping his hands inside his pockets. ”More or less.” He flicked the tip of his nose and considered them all with assurance. “Yes, more or less. Sophie you find us the setting. Hardison, you’re stuck with Sophie making sure our identities are covered. Parker, we have some heavy lifting to do.”

He was already walking away to the girls’ room and Eliot was calling him:

“And Eliot? Does he get punched?”

“Actually, no. You will enjoy this one”, came the answer from the other room.

 

***

 

Parker walked up the pier where Eliot was meditating or maybe just fishing without a fishing rod. Eliot could probably do that.

She dropped herself beside him and leant in to whisper:

“You can’t sleep either because of tomorrow?”

Eliot didn’t look up to answer, hunched over his arms, feet over the edge.

“I never sleep much. Just feels good here. The sand is cold, but not so cold as in the desert. You can walk barefoot in there. Although don’t do that. Not as clean as in the desert.”

Parker studied the bit of horizon at the end of the pier, stopped on the right and left by land and lights.

“You can’t see the limit between the sky and the sea.”

Eliot huffed.

“That’s a surprise. There’s too much light in the city for the sky to appear completely dark.”

Parker looked down to the water where Eliot’s attention had been the whole time. She liked the weightlessness inside water, but was suspicious of its terrible weight. You couldn’t move easily in the water. And there was a big pond of black sky.

The water was lapping at the wood a good meter underneath, dark and casting back at her a pale cloud in place of a reflection. When she looked up Eliot was studying the lights coming from the Islands, while his fingers were drumming a loose rhythm on the boards. He did not seem disturbed by her presence and this mattered most to her.

“I hear you come out”, she started pensively. “Every morning and every night I hear you in my sleep. In the morning only. I’m too tired in the evening to hear you.”

She blinked back at the water as a ripple that looked like a fish disturbed the surface.

“But at night, I still know you go out because I can feel Sophie stiffen on the bed. She tenses, suddenly, every time you go out.”

And violently. Sophie for someone so used to master herself was unaccustomed to many of her own reflexes. Parker felt it while jumping with her. It was surprise repressed immediately, and you could see the shock going through her if you looked close enough.

Eliot was the opposite; reflexes would carry him completely and suddenly and he would let it take in his body. Ragged doll effect.

Less bruises when you hit the ground.

“I play with her hair afterwards”, Parker continued, stopping a similar gesture towards Eliot messy bun, when his body caved in to study the water. “She relaxes. I don’t know if it’s the hair that relaxes her or me not saying anything, because she doesn’t talk about it. Not at night, not ever. I could ask but I know she won’t answer.”

Eliot didn’t answer either and Parker pleaded.

“I don’t want to pick a side.”

Eliot seemed to really think about this one. His body looked like a gargoyle sneering down on the city of Paris. Except he had a whole nose.

“You don’t ask Sophie”, Eliot offered, and he turned to her with a sad smile. “Because she doesn’t want you to ask. And Sophie gets what she wants. It’s as simple as that. She’s always hiding something from us.”

“So is Nate.”

He gently laughed. The light at the end of the pier was lighting his breath and eyebrows and hair, making him look like a fancy portrait of him by Hardison. Parker had liked that portrait.

“Yeah. Nate is hiding a battalion of defeats and the war and the treaties after. Nate could be hiding History and the entirety of the Earth population and Mars in his glass.”

“Mars has no martians.”

Hardison talked a lot about life in space sometimes. It was quite immense and desperate. She found the idea of an inexhaustible and unreachable unknown far more exciting than Martians.

Eliot peeked at her from underneath his hair.

“The point is it doesn’t matter if what he is hiding exists or not. I’m not willing to follow him there to find out what he’s hiding. That’s not the kind of relationship I have with him. But Sophie, I would want to. I need to. You lot depends on her.”

“For fixing us.”

“And other things”, he grumbled.

Parker absently nodded. She was thinking of Sophie and the back of her head at night; she was remembering Hardison catching her. 

“Hmm. But it works”, she snapped her head to Eliot. ”It works, you know. None of us are normal, right? Measuring _any_ relationship by normal is a bit weird. We can’t have trust. Not really. And I probably don’t want to have trust either. But we can have something different and that works too.”

Parker had decided a long time ago Maggie was the only normal person she knew. That Hardison with his brain like a Christmas tree and Nate’s like an upgraded bank vault were not normal. That Eliot who smelt of cooking spices and resin and broken noses was not normal. And Sophie’s body would sometimes fall into Gainsborough’s character postures like Parker’s would embrace the stone when she was climbing. They were not normal.

“I work with trust”, he seemed to argue.

“I don’t.” Parker arched her eyebrows and looked at Eliot defiantly. “Could you be okay with that?”

He had a strange expression plastered on the face for a moment; she could not quite read that yet.

“Okay”, he whispered. His eyes were on her face for a few seconds more and she let them. When he finally looked away, he exhaled loudly and hit his thighs with his hands.

The sound died on the silent beach without an echo.

That’s why the sea is overrated.

”Wait", Eliot added. "Does it mean I cannot trust you not to push me into the water at some point because I am really not ready to swim this early in the year and I heard you plot with Hardison.”

 

***

 

A fight is like a dance and a victory like a song. The final act would have to play out on a sun-kissed island in front of Cannes, Sainte Marguerite, the largest of the two Lérins Islands, off the coast of Cannes.

A fight is like a dance and of course the victory would have to be enacted in ridiculous costumes picked by Hardison.

“Why do I have to be Iron Man?”

Sophie’s voice was practically unrecognisable from behind her mask. In fact the entirety of her person was unrecognisable, down to her walk. The accent had stuck though, much to Hardison’s delight, permeated through layers of cardboard or metal or whatever the costume was made of.

“Because if San Lorenzo’s dead first lady shows up at the aperitif”, Nate argued, trying to do something with his blue, red and white shield. “We won’t need to worry about anyone going to prison.”

At least Hardison had given a shield to this bullet magnet, so Eliot was not completely unhappy about those so called camouflage costume. The fact Hardison had called them camouflage was the most atrocious thing about them.

“He means we’ll be in jail”, Parker specified.

“Parker, we get it”, Eliot responded curtly.

“Sophie will be in jail and since the mark is going to read it, we will all be in jail. Except me. I may help Nate because he believed me when I said I had not stolen the Slippers. But definitely not Hardison. I wanted to be Hardison, he has a cape.”

Eliot lifted his eyes to the Heavens.

“We discussed this already”, Hardison sighed. “I am Thor because Thor leaves a lot of room for hiding my tools. My Mjolnir is actually a shock-proof stick hard drive that I can pluck at any moment into-“ He stopped and put a hand on his mouth. “This came out so wrong”, he mumbled.

Eliot cast him a deadly glare.

“That’s what you spend the night working on, seriously?”

“Cosplay is a very serious business and I could make a living out of it, you hear me. I had to redesign entirely the top of Nate suit to add a bulletproof padding because Nate has a tendency to get shot in situations such as the one we find ourselves into. And also because, no offense man, but everyone who is not me would need padding.”

He had to be kidding.

Eliot elbowed him frankly. “And not Eliot, okay. The Iron suit has a purpose _besides_ looking elegant, ladies and gentlemen. Any phone or tool you need can be found in-” He opened his arms in Sophie’s direction. “Iron Man’s power back-pack.”

“Yeah, thanks for nothing. I’m at a party in Cannes and wearing a suit of armour. I’m a bloody moving wardrobe. I deserve a little more. I just relocated a private pre-launch party for a Hollywood blockbuster using two different personas, a Hotel suite and a fungus. Two different personas!”

“Oh, maybe you wanted the green make-up, huh?” Eliot barked. “I’m in my underwear!”

“I don’t understand how my costume is a costume but I don’t mind”, Parker commented, dressed in what was essentially her augmented catsuit with a red wig.

“And I’m wearing a skin suit far too tight for someone who points and laughs at ice-skating” Nate dryly concluded. “Are we done now?”

At least, Eliot had recognised Captain America. The costumes Parker and Hardison had stolen were good costumes, he had to give them that. It did give them free access to all of the party’s rooms.

“To your marks, Eorlingas”, sung Hardison.

They hadn’t even needed earbuds on this one. Everything fell right into place. Nate was insane for coming up with something like that and they were even more insane for agreeing to do it.

But they agreed.

To the costumes.

To the set-up.

To the fact they absolutely trusted Hardison to juggle with virtual money using a modified prop mythical hammer as a computer; Parker to be as quick and light and superhuman as she ever was; Nate to assess just precisely their multiple marks’ frame of mind; Eliot to keep a fight safe for the participants and on-lookers; and Sophie to…

He wasn’t so sure what Sophie was supposed to do in the course of their plan. But she could do it, eyes closed. Being trusted and having someone’s back are two different things.

Sophie had their backs in everything.

His favourite part was when the dishonest and honest proprietors of Parker’s loot showed up at the same time in the backroom, where Parker and Nate had stacked everything Parker had stolen during the last week. Which was a lot and Eliot really should advise Nate against giving her so much free time when they are in certain parts of the world.

What does happen when you put lots of treasures with lots of thieves and their original proprietors?

That’s right, lots of calls to the police and the thieves were bound to start hitting on each other. Eliot was enjoying himself far too much. There was this tall bold guy who tried to trip a large blonde with a chandelier to keep her from reaching an antique chest.

The most delicious part was seeing them freeze the moment they were fighting too close to a fragile object and move to another spot.

And any time one of them was getting a little too punchy, Eliot would step in and separate them using a diamond necklace.

They could not help it, they were thieves. Thieves Eliot had spent the evening before gathering from every nook and crany of the area to warn them apparently there was a large cargo of looting to leave Sainte Marguerite in the morning. And every one of them had been _very_ grateful for the information.

Gotta appreciate southern hospitality and drinks.

Actually the part he enjoyed the most was Parker sneaking between the troops of thieves and waltzing to alleviate of their weapons the ones foolish enough to bring one. She would drop them one after the other into Nate’s hand who would in turn give them to Sophie in charge of stacking them neatly in a box for the authority to find. At least no one would find inconspicuous a big robot carrying unloaded unregistered weapons in the middle of a launch party.

Enzo T. showed up to the meeting point, late because those guys usually are and hung-over because Eliot had ended up his thief tour by visiting Enzo’s favourite bar and having a whole lot of fun with him and his crew. Eliot hadn’t failed to casually drop how he had heard of a small cargo of valuables was being transferred in the morning by those Barbousse and Perrier no-good thieves.

On the Island, inside a not so discreet restaurant, the crime boss found a) a brunch party in full swing at which the mayor was probably invited, b) a backroom full of gold and jewels from which all the coast thieves were being evacuated discreetly by an army of cops, c) the people with which he was supposed to have a _serious_ talk about trying to bamboozle him, those people were arguing quite loudly with a Viking god who was holding a case full of weapons of all size, d) there was suddenly a paper in his hand where he was quite sure was a cigarette a second before.

The inscription read “To Enzo Tapiero”.

Hidden between the guests, Eliot chuckled when he saw Enzo’s Adam’s apple shoot up.

One of his gorillas tried to glimpse the name but Enzo T. tore open the envelope and shoved it inside his pocket.

Gorilla number one did not insist, but Gorilla number two was getting fidgety and asked dryly:

“What’s inside, boss?”

The team had voted for a restrained “Check your account.”

Hardison, of course, had added a cocky “Yeah, that account.”

Eliot was lapping it up.

“What’s going on?” Gorilla number two had achieved a state of frank uneasiness, her eyes shifting from the envelope to her boss’ face.

Enzo T. whipped out his phone and typed, only to become white as a sheet.

“The payment. Everything’s back.”

Gorilla number two shrugged and sneered:

“Does it change anything? We can grab a cocktail before we settle the sc-“

“I am not beating the hell out of those goobers while Scorsese is sipping champagne, okay?”

“That’s not Scorsese”, Gorilla number one blurted out.

“I don’t care”, Enzo spat, certainly more panicky than he wanted to sound. “I have my money back, but I have no idea what is going on here! I suggest we retreat quietly and forget about everything.”

Gorilla number two heaved out a heartbreaking sigh and pushed her boss towards the only exit not blocked by cops going in and out, or rich people too busy brunching, or grans carrying out jewels in their bare hands, or wanted thieves sneaking out empty handed.

“Seriously, where did you find those people?” Gorilla number two scoffed. “I thought we were here for a little talk and they... they ruin everything.” 

A nudge to the side distracted Eliot from the scene and he turned to find Iron Man, arms open.

“A little help?”

A few minutes afterwards, Eliot was hiding under a table with half of an armour, trying not to laugh as Sophie was popping up from behind the table and startled Fiona and Perrier. Eliot was watching their feet from underneath the cloth.

“Robbie, where the hell were you?”

Fiona sounded like Sophie had let her bore to death.

She probably wouldn’t have been bored if she could see what Eliot was seeing from his vantage point: Sophie from the waist up in black Robbie-typical frills, from the waist down wearing iron pants, judiciously hidden from the con men’s eyes by what smelled like an impressive assortments of cheese.

“Fiona, Enzo T. was here just now; left as quick as you like and all the money disappeared from the jointed account,” Sophie dramatically announced.

“What,” Perrier wailed, his feet swaying a little. “We are dead!”

“You brought him in. He is your responsibility”, Fiona answered with disgust. “Why did you accept his guns offer?”

“I never agreed to anything of the sort! Oh, we are dead.”

“One problem at a time; what is going on? Rob-”

Sophie had disappeared from behind the table, replaced by Hulk and Iron Man having a chat. Well, mostly Eliot was chatting and Sophie was trying to drink with a straw, not giggling, inside a suit of armour, while they were retreating.

This could have been her finest performance of the year.

On the other side of the table, a look of surprise was painted on Fiona’s face.

“Well. Colour me impressed. This is the most ridiculous meeting I have been to. Where did she- Wait.” Fiona stopped and stood on tip-toe, trying to have a look inside the backroom where most of the commotion was coming from. “Is this my Picasso back there?”

 

***

 

Sophie was almost disappointed Nate had fixed that phone volume issue; with the breeze in the pines and the bells of the chapel singing in the background, she could not hear a word of Mrs. Marsters thanks. But Nate’s appeased and joyful expression spoke volume.

“He won’t be able to do any more harm to anyone”, Nate assured Mrs. Marsters.

None of them will.

Fiona and Perrier had been found with stolen weapons in their possession; Fiona held Perrier entirely responsible for what probably was the robbery of the century, including some of her own propriety; Enzo T. had been arrested in Italy for stealing a major piece of evidence in a case against an American bank.

The experts were confused as to the presence of his name on the torn document.

“I know Miguel will be well cared for. Yes, you’re welcome. Goodbye and good luck.”

Nate hung up and let his arm fall by the deckchair picking up the drink he had put on the floor. The monks of the island had unfortunately not provided them with side tables.

“Does anyone want to phone Jones?” Nate asked without much conviction.

An assembly of thieves sipping their drinks under the shades responded in the negative.

Nate did not insist.

They remained silent, enjoying the quiet of the setting. The monks on Sainte Honorat had welcomed them warmly and Sophie never suspected they had such sweet wine in their cave. Even the climate seemed sweeter on the lesser island.

“Did you know we would have to spend the night at the monastery to stay away from the raid of officers?” Hardison inquired, feigning disinterest by interesting himself in his glass. He didn’t quite like the wine, but like a kid who is offered to drink with the adults for the first time had been unable to resist.

Sipping fine wine inside a monastery on an isolated island after having successfully taken down a third of the criminal population of the area was too cinematic an occasion to miss.

“He did”, Sophie gloated. “Probably pre-booked as well.”

“There is no way we would have been accepted in a convent on such a short notice if it had not been for asylum.” Hardison seemed worried for the monks. “Did we even claim we were seeking asylum?”

“I have some connections.”

Nate was smug as only Nate can be. They didn’t have an opportunity to rub it in the marks’ face and as a consequence, the team was left with the weight of his triumph.

It could have gone nuts. It did.  

“From seminary school?” Hardison was not letting it go and his concern for the clergy was growing more and more apparent. “Nate, come on.”

“There’s a wine yard as well”, Parker stated out of the blue. “What tells you he got in via the monks?”

They all looked at Parker who had made a concession to comfort and was lounging as normally as the rest of them. Upside down, feet up, face directed to the sky.

“What?” She turned to them, innocent. “I’ve been practising my crime solving abilities. I think I figured out who stole the Slippers...”

Parker looked intently at Sophie, a silent question in the eyes.

Maybe Parker did know her after all. It felt good though, having someone other than Nate trying to get inside, surprising her, challenging her comfort. It was fun letting Hardison lose his head over what might or might not have happened in her past. He would never probe.

It was better to have Parker take the step and let her.

Sophie gave her a small wink, not even, the tiniest clenching of muscles between her nose and eye, and removed her lips from the rim of her glass. Parker turned her head back to the sky, a silly grin on the face and closed her eyes. Throwing her head back against the wood, Sophie emulated her.   

“Well, if Parker solved the crime.” She let out a deep laugh, two notes only, because she wanted it to be dramatic. Just a tiny bit. “Tara did. For me.”

Eliot seemed bitten by a mosquito on his chair and yelped.

“Ha. I knew it”, Eliot cried, smacking his glass down the ground and pointing at her. “You are a liar who lies!”

“I never asked her to”, Sophie argued. “She apparently wanted it to be a surprise, in memory of good old time, but it was a very bad idea and I made it known to her. She still needs to apologise.”

“Wait? Seriously? Tara?” Eliot scoffed, puzzled. “Why would she stole it and put it in the middle of the office-“

“My apartment”, Nate corrected. “Is it so hard to remember?”

“In Nate’s apartment and leave it for you to find? That’s far too rom-“ Realisation hit him like a hockey puck and he let out a high-pitched cry. “Are you kidding me?!”

“That was information I did not need”, Hardison lamented, drowning his sorrow into his drink.

Tara and Sophie being an item, even in the past, seemed to light the hitter’s day like Christmas in the middle of the year. He was lying on the chair, struck, arms opened in the air as if he really was considering diving into the boxes under the tree and taking all of them at once.

“Wow, _now_ I have leverage.” He burst out of laughter. “Why didn’t you say so? You could’ve told when we-”

Sophie shook her head.

“Because I knew you’d react like that?”

Eliot widened his eyes.

“But you just said it, like _now_?”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake Eliot”, Sophie raised her voice. “I _knew_ you wanted me to tell you. So I told you. That’s all.” She blinked, looking at him with her biggest eyes. “You’re my friend and, yes, I _trust_ you with that kind of information. Not always. But you know…”

She had said it with a softer voice.

“Now shut up and finish your drink.”

And she did.

They all drank in silence for a while, processing what had happened, their face an open book. Parker was immensely proud of herself. Nate was immensely proud of Parker and already thinking about ways to use this particular information at his advantage. Hardison had meant it when he had said it was too much information. She ought to make up for it by having sent to him the very best paints from Italy. Eliot was about to ask a question.

“If I’m your friend, does that mean I can ask for det-“

“Eliot, this is a monastery!” Nate erupted. “This should entail introspection and silence.”

They all stared at him, exchanged quick looks and started shooting:

“And sobriety, maybe?”

“Chastity?”

“Non-thievery business?”

“And not convincing mafia bosses they have stepped into Quantum Leap?”

“And, and no card games!”

“And no slaughtering Sinatra in the shower!”

“And making coffee for everyone when you are up first!”

“And, and...”

“Seriously, you’re doing this now?”


End file.
